Big_Foot

We can be pretty sure, his next post will be - A HUGE blog giveaway!!!
2 free days with national or whatever it was
Just like us on facebook!!!! God, what a sad world we are living in...

cruisr

And it's getting sadder and will get more desperate as the whole miles/points game change will see the disappearance of many blogs. I wonder how much National paid for that original blog post to Road Warriorette and the others.

itsaboutthejourney

+ 1

eunduklee

+1. shots fired... lol

YoungSoloTraveler

Travel Codex sponsored by Alaskan Airlines. We give true unbiased opinions and compensation doesn't affect editorial content, we swear!

gpapadop

I do not like sponsored posts. Stating the fact that nobody asked me seriously to do one is a minor detail. Actually, some obscure spammy folks have asked me to and I always press "Delete".

I read that post at Travel Codex and was clearly disappointed. But I understand the economics behind it and I know how tough it is to keep it going without the fat dinero from the credit cards that can completely wreck a blog's content.

Travel Codex is in the world famous (translated: not many care) TBB Blogs I Like list for the good content that it provides.

I think we can give some slack once in a while to worthy blogs. There is so much wrong in the rest of the blogosphere!

Also, please place that disclosure at the beginning of the post so I don't waste my time reading it almost halfway, thanks.

Now waiting for R[.] to add a comment about the completely smashing success his blog is amid some traffic numbers thrown in.

And on and on we go...

In the meantime, I found two gift cards in my wallet I had completely forgotten about, YEAH!

Adam1222

George, I agree that generally I think highly of Travel Codex, which is why I attempted to engage with Scott rather than just ignore or say something snarky. I expected better.

Raffles

I ran a series of 3 BA sponsored articles recently, albeit they were essentially travel guides to various BA destinations and therefore not sales pieces per se. We wrote them in-house.

The first one got a bad response, no-one (at all) complained about the next two. Once you get people used to it, they are fine.

The most amusing complaint was from a reader who said 'You haven't lost me yet'. Which, given that I spend 50 hours a week producing content for this guy to consume for free, was very generous of him I thought :-)

Don't like it? Well, stop using advert blockers for a start - then companies will pay for normal ads instead to reach you, and publishers won't be earning 30% less from ads than they otherwise would. And, frankly, when a large chunk of the editorial in glossy magazines, even GQ / CN Traveller is quietly marked 'Editorial Promotion' in the corner, I don't feel vaguely bad about it. Even national newspapers in the UK run sponsored editorial on a regular basis and they theoretically operate on a higher ethics level than a miles site.

I actually saw it is a badge of honour that BA wanted to buy space on my little site!

Adam1222

I think you are completely missing the point. No one is saying it was wrong of Scott to run an ad masquerading as a blog post. Rather, we are discussing the lack of disclosure. There was nothing to indicate to the reader it was an ad rather than a bona fide review until print in a lighter font at the bottom of the page.

In newspapers, where an ad looks like it could be editorial content, there is typically a header at the top of the page saying "For advertising purposes" or something similar. That's at the top of the page, which is much different than the bottom of a scrollable website.

Advertising masquerading as content is nothing new and has nothing to do with pop-up ads. Tobacco companies for example were well known for it in the 50s-70s. The fact that it successfully misled people is why we have rules requiring "clear and conspicuous" disclosure now.

eunduklee

who is this [R.] guy? what traffic did he boast about?

either way every morning i come to my company and i always drink a cup of coffee and laugh by myself reading this.

eunduklee

advert blocker are annoying for an internet companies but you should be able to thin outside the box and come up with new features. our company saw 60% increase in ad blocker usage which brought the rev down but we found out other ways around it and we evovled.