Editorial or Advertorial: What’s the Difference?

This piece from the Online Journalism Review:  Editorial or Advertorial: What’s the Difference?, is a blast from the past … 1998 to be exact.

It shows that today’s blogvertorial controversy is nothing new at all. Obviously performance-based advertising is not evil thing so long as the line between editorial and advertising is clear, prominent and transparent.

From the piece:

“This issue is not just related to the credibility of individual publications but to the integrity of online journalism. Buckling under the pressure to make a profit, many sites may be undermining the Internet’s future as a credible source of journalism.

“Along with the problems in labeling, there are also advertisers who will stay with a site based on the number of ‘clicks’ on their banners and on a performance basis, where a percentage of advertisers’ sales will go to the site, said Lewis Perdue, president of IdeaWorx, a new media company. He explained that the potential of online journalism may be crushed by the pressure to profit — and perhaps for editorial to cater to advertisers.

“There are venture capital firms who are making the site that they fund do a return on investment for every page. If that page doesn’t generate enough income, you don’t continue writing,’ Perdue said. ‘I think that if performance based advertising becomes the norm, the Web will be a gigantic infomercial. I think people will think that the Web will be somewhere between limited and worthless, and I think that is the problem that online journalism faces.'”