Subject: Dom's Domain Asks a Question From: Milwnews@aol.com Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 18:41:31 -0400

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Folks,

The latest column at Dom's Doman is a humorous (I hope) diatribe on things I
hate about the Internet (I remind the lists of several of these new columns
because people on it have regarded it more as information than
self-promotion, though it is clearly both).

But in the email-delivered version of the column  for subscribers I found
myself wrestling with two separate issues that touch hard on recent threads
on these lists.  One was the storytelling issue (with satire yet!) of
adapting a column created for web multimedia to the requirements of e-mail
users who may or may not have hypertext programs. I learned a lot about what
each delivery method caters to.

The other issue is appropriate advertising -- and I guess I have to rely on
my reputation over time on these lists to understand I'm not spamming but
exploring a problem we all  face, or will,  in niche-marketing cyberspace,
and how to explain it to advertisers. 

How hard can an advertiser target journalists?  That was my issue. To
explain, we actually have landed some text advertisers for the e-mail
version, mainly Wisconsin (my home) products with national applications and
Internet connection.  One is the maker of all those Cheeseheads you see on
football fans' heads and ears during TV games. (Frankly, I kind of like
having advertisers outside the general expectations!) 

Suddenly the manufacturer is engaged in a trademark war. Knowing my  e-mail
column deals with online news sites mainly, and hence probably has a higher
than normal proportion of journalists receiving it, the advertiser asked to
insert a link  to something that many news outlets would also regard as a
real and probably amusing news story.  The link is to my advertiser's defense
(press release) of why his Cheesehead firm is going to court, and it is
clearly an advertising link, within the ad, not within my column.

Still, I wrestled all weekend with whether to include it (yes, I do have some
veto power over ads sold).   I decided he had a right to use the ad space,
clearly labeled, as he wanted. My journalistic instincts also say that a
federal court battle over funny-looking rubber cheese gear, which has turned
into a big business, would intrigue a lot of  news sites I know, so his link
has informational validity -- and journalists recognize a press release when
they see one.

My subtler worry was the target audience, including several from these lists
-- would they accept such a link as an advertiser's right to interest them?
Or would they feel this was "overtargetting" -- would there be  a
psychological backfire on my column, or on the advertiser, when journalists
and media people in particular feel targetted by an ad with a column?

Now this may seem unduly sensitive the way we're all being overwhelmed with
untargetted e-mail, but I worry about it.  Ethically and all, we may promote
ourselves as well as IDEAS on  lists and in columns, since many of us work in
this industry as builders, PR, consultants and so forth. But personal seems
one thing, corporate ad-client another, and I think there is an ongoing
dilemma developing for people trying to get what they regard as news to the
online news community and that community's bristling over being singled out.
Even writing about this will be interpreted  by some as spamming for a
client. 

Am I being hyper?  Does including such a link, within an ad, cause anybody
problems?

Dominique Paul Noth
Milwnews@aol.com
Dom's Domain: Media Sites and Strategies at http://www.arcfile.com/dom
E-mail version: subscribe domslist at listserv@arcfile.com 

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