Subject: Re: Yahoo/etc. goes commercial From: steve@webmedia.com (Steve Bowbrick) Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 15:01:29 +0100

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Hi team,

>> reference money.  Even on a small list, advertisers will pay NOT to be
>> listed next to "Crazy Eddies Computers- Right off the truck".
>
>Let me be the first and, with more than 700 links, possibly the
>largest, media list publisher to unconditionally REJECT this idea.
>
>I stop trusting magazines when they start running "reviews" adjacent to
>ads for the same product. I see nothing different here.

No, Eric. You commission the review and then you get your ad sales folk to
sell the company whose product is reviewed a space. This - and 'subtler'
practices - is common-place.

>I would be more than happy to brag about our hit counts or to
>summarize, in general terms, the extremely well qualified audience we
>attract, based on user registrations. I might even tell how one very
>large and very prestigious news organization has instructed all its
>reporters to use our list as a source.  But I am not about to sell my
>integrity or my list's, and I cannot imagine that the public would
>long tolerate any list that did.

How on earth would a magazine - any magazine - ever sell ad space without
'bragging' about circulation (hits) or their extremely well-qualified
audience or the fact that a prestigious news organization subscribes en
masse. No one questions a magazine's integrity when they do just these
things. Get real, Eric.

>Ads? Yes. I take them. I'll be the first to say how I think they'd be of
>great value to the advertiser. But ads don't buy content. Ever.

OK. Maybe it's a little subtler than that but if I'm taking an ad in a
magazine I definitely phone the editor of the page opposite my ad and try
to leverage some editorial from them (a double-whammy, right?). They don't
always say yes but the _never_ say '...ads don't buy content. Ever.
Period...' especially if what I'm giving them is actually of editorial
value (not unheard-of).

The other day I called the art editor of a trade magazine here in Britain.
A reporter had told me he was short of pics for a feature on the web. I
made up some screen shots (our sites, natch) and biked them off to the art
editor. They were used, I got some free publicity and the art editor filled
some holes and no money changed hands. Did we do something wrong - or
unusual?

We're not building a morally-pure medium here. We're the same people we
used to be before the net. We'll pursue similar practices in selling space
and buying attention. By the sam emeasure, we'll expect minimum standards
and we'll judge product by those standards.

Steve

--
Steve Bowbrick, Director, Webmedia                        steve@webmedia.com
                                                            +44 171 580 5950
http://www.webmedia.com                                 fax +44 171 637 5950
Webmedia is an Internet production powerhouse        mobile +44 0860 183 481



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