What the f…? This is the third time I see an ad for the new 2009 Silverado Chevy Truck. Not in a car magazine. Not in People magazine. Not on TV. No, I saw it in three very respected green sites, out of all places.
This brings up an issue that’s faced by green bloggers all the time. If you are going to take advertising, how can you make sure that the ads do not go counter to your message? Green certified ad networks are still few and far between, and sometimes have requirements, like Natural Path Media, that preclude the smaller blogs. Of course, there is always the option of handling one’s own ads. But, who has that kind of time?
In my view, sites and blogs that are serious about the climate/energy problem simply shouldn’t carry those types of ads. Period. They should either find other advertising, find other funding, or close shop. They defeat their own purpose, and everyone else’s, and kill credibility in the process, and add to the already abundant and demotivating skepticism and apathy, if they show such ads.
I’m amazed that you and we even need to point this out. I agree with your terminology.
On another related note, and one that riles me, how is it that the auto companies who are STILL advertising these huge gas-eating vehicles are, at the same time, asking for bailouts and help involving public funds? In my view, if ANY public funds are used to help GM or Ford or whatever, they better show that they “get it” and convert, pronto, to smaller more fuel-efficient cars and to different sources of energy. In fact, such change should be a requirement, a condition, of any help or “bailout.”
Cheers,
Jeff
I agree with you Jeff on how environmental blog shouldn’t advertise for gas guzzlers and so on.
I don’t advertise on my blog. I don’t think I will ever do so. However, if I was to do so, I would use green ads networks or advertise for fellow bloggers I read ( or a company I would endorse)
I guess it’s normal for car makers to still advertise for their huge cars. They are most probably unsold ones and they need to be sold. Now, if a poor soul is willing to buy one…
It may just be done in order to sell stocks. And thinking about it, they can’t make greener cars in a blink of an eye. it takes a lot of research and development I guess. And they perhaps don’t really want to put a lot of people out of employment in the meantime.
To conclude, it’s still a pleasure to read from you two ! Keep it up Marguerite and Jeff ! 🙂
I have Google Adwords on my site. Most of the time, they at least in some way relate to the topics on my homepage so I’m not that concerned about them. If they don’t I just chuckle at them, and wonder if the advertisers would be happy to know their ad is on a “green” blog. My feeling is that my readers would ignore any ad for SUVs or somesuch nonsense, and know it was a snafu on Google’s part and not mine.
I was, however, startled to see this a couple of months back: http://suitablydespairing.blogspot.com/2008/08/my-new-job-recruitment-agent-for-mi6.html
Chevy Volt (poor response so far [1]) and SUV hybrids (what a concept! Only green-washing people could come up with that, no?) not withstanding, I cannot see how a “Green” website can put up ads from companies who have CEOs that claims global warming is a crock of s*** [2].
That said, maybe an ad for the Chevy Volt would be ok but not for the behemoth [3] that is the Silverado.
–
[1] “The majority of [the comments] are negative,” Lyle Dennis, a New Jersey neurologist who runs the blog GM-Volt.com, said last week. “A lot of people are saying they’re very disappointed and ‘take me off the [waiting] list.’ ”
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/11/autos/volt_official_reveal/index.htm
[2] http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/02/bob-lutz-global.html
[3] http://www.chevrolet.com/silverado/#silverado-3500hd
It’s tough to carry a moral high-ground if your site is sold to a larget entity and you now have to answer to shareholders. SUV market is dead so they will advertise on any platform available. Curious as to why the areas which cater to people who are least likely to buy one…like trying to sell ice to Eskimos – that’s just poor PR.
Tag!!! 🙂 http://passionategreen.blogspot.com/2008/11/passionategreen-been-tagged.html
GreenofaKind, it’s a problem with how readership is measured. It might just be measured by hits, it might be measured by clickthroughs, but for a whole “family” of sites that includes non-Green sites.
Truthfully, my years in advertising sales made me completely immune to ads on print/web sites. I just don’t even register them usually. I can’t ignore TV or radio ads as well, so I stick mostly to ad-free media. I always wonder who those ads work on.
Absolutely! Car ads were one of the main reasons I discontinued my participation in the Sustainlane “green” ad network. First, it was the Fiji Green bottled water ad that practically gave me a heart attack when I first saw it on my site before realizing I could disapprove it. Then, it was car ad after car ad after car ad. I don’t personally own a car, and I’m not about urging people to buy new ones, hybrid or not. Seeing all those car ads on Fake Plastic Fish just made me depressed, even as they generated quite a bit of income. So I canceled the whole ad network.
Now, I do Blogads (which tend to be much greener and more cause-oriented) and Share-a-Sale, where I can choose which ads I want to display.
I would like to market my blog to companies I believe in for advertising, but I’m kind of a wimpy sales person. It’s not why I started the blog in the first place.
Oh, and I don’t do Google ads because of the lack of control over them.
Beth
Rosa, I agree, measurement is like statistics, you have an ability to see what you WANT to see.
There has been a study done (forgot the location) on how people view sites and how long they spend time on it. Within a few seconds of concentrating on primarily the center of the screen and a few milliseconds in the perimeters, the observer was done with it. Fascinating study.
Anyway, it does beg the question as to the ad’s usefulness – though it MUST be working else they wouldn’t be spending millions, right? Google had it right when the robot searched for keywords on the page and made it target adverts – though like Beth Terry pointed out, there’s no control.
Layoffs are starting to happen as the market tightens – ad revenue will be squeezed so we’ll see odd things appearing on the corners of the intertubes. I don’t find it revolting – that’s up to the reader to decide – and that’s the risk the site faces when posting a hypocritical ad.
With environmental sites, it’s even easier to frighten away readers because they tend to have a very strict value-set, they tend to be more critical, observant, and quite passionate. Target advertising is the only thing that works here so let the car companies waste money here – it’s their own fault… We just need to laugh and use the site’s content as the value – not it’s ability/inability to get funding from 100% pure socially responsible locations. The only time I get angry is when the site abviously “sells out” and is a contributor to greenwashing. The minute I see it, that’s when the site gets removed from my bookmarks.
This is one reason Appropedia doesn’t have ads! We’ve seen similar ads on commercially-operated green sites.
Despairing: “…and know it was a snafu on Google’s part and not mine.”
Not necessarily a snafu on the part of the advertiser tho… I suspect a lot of these ads, especially for hybrid SUVs, are deliberately targeted at green sites, using keywords.
I guest blogged for a fellow green blogger who has google ads. The post was on flame retardants in children’s pajamas, and I specifically talked about proban and surerest – flame retardant cotton fabrics. Sure enough, Google Ads picked up companies advertising those fabrics . . .when the whole post was mentioning the names to tell parents how to avoid flame retardants in pajamas.
Jennifer
http://www.thesmartmama.com
Jennifer, I just had similar experience with post on coupons I just wrote on Huffington Post. Here I write about coupons being yet another ploy from marketers, and next thing I see, a Google ad just under the post, advertising for 1,000 coupons . . .
I’d be interested to see a blog on “Green certified ad networks” since you seem to have done some looking. Natural Path Media requires “minimum traffic of 50,000 monthly uniques” I see – are there any other options?
That can be very tricky indeed. At AltGlobe the only advantage that we have is that the community is tight and the ads can be monitored. Mostly we used Google AdWords, and when an ad comes up that doesn’t seem appropriate we are able to remove it from the options. I’d like to learn more about certified green ad networks, though!
Incidentally, AltGlobe will let anyone blog at the site as long as they’re interested in green or similarly alternative topics. We’ll even let you (encourage, even) link back to your own blog in shameless self-promotion!
What green sites really need to watch for is the cheap products that claim to do something green. To me this is worse than a SUV ad on a Green page. If the masses out there get sold crappy, don’t work supposed green stuff you can count on the movement taking a quick nose dive.
Green blogs need to review products to help people separate the trash from the treasure. I have seen far too many blogs just jumping on the latest “green product” train without knowing a darn thing.