Gossip Product Placement
Quick post today, as I have important business to attend to at the pool. (Recovering from Comp #2 and preparing mentally for Comp #3, which requires a lot of time not reading about celebrity and reading the Jessica Darling novels instead).
But take a look at this — screencapped from Lainey Gossip earlier this week:
So there are a number of things going on in this shot. First, Lainey rehearses her plea for a media object that she likes — this month it’s 500 Days of Summer, sometimes it’s Friday Night Lights or some other smallish film. As I’ve mentioned before (in my original post on Lainey, as well as my explanation of the MiniVan majority) Lainey loathes what she views as vapid films and programming — especially when they lead to the demise of the likes of Friday Night Lights. In general, the things Lainey promotes are not ALSO advertised on the site. I always thought this was odd, as Friday Night Lights would be reaching an audience that had been incredibly primed to like the show. But there’s also the potential for a perception of ‘conflict of interest,’ or at least that she was plugging it not because she actually like it, but because she was being paid to say that she did.
Thus my interest in the ad for 500 Days of Summer — Lainey had been hyping the film for several weeks, so someone — some savvy ad Googler — must have figured out that they should plop an ad on the site. But how does this shift the way that we think about Lainey’s promotions?
Now, Lainey and other gossip columnists are NOT journalists, and thus not subject to the journalistic ethics that should force the likes of The New York Times to acknowledge their financial association with Nora Ephron, the director of Julie and Julia, when they write 502 different articles plugging the movie (not to mention the fact that the newspaper gets a huge plug in the film itself). RIGHT? But Lainey is usually pretty good about labeling posts as “Sponsored” — whether by her recent big sponsor KY Jelly or past sponsors Venus Razors, etc. On Perezhilton, sponsorship is either put in the background — with elaborate wallpapers usually plugging the premiere of a new show — or in special posts that are slightly off-white and have the words SPONSORED in small letters at the top. Like Lainey, he has small ads running up and down the side as well.
Now, I don’t begrudge such ads whatsoever. It makes both Lainey and Perez able to stay home all day and provide me with more gossip. And gossips being ‘sponsored’ is certainly nothing new — when gossip columnists had radio and television shows, they’d have to plug the sponsors product themselves, claiming to use it and love it (just like all other hosts on early radio and television).
So why does this bug me? I think because I want to believe — and have been trained to believe — in Lainey’s “authentic” opinion, and that the opinions voiced on her site, whether concerning celebrities, products, or blind items, are ‘her own.’ To see the ad for the movie next to her love for it undercuts that authenticity. Should she refuse ad money from any program or product that she likes? Or should she just remain mum on her affection if it’s also a product on her site? Or am I being too sensitive and need to realize that subtle internet ads are the way of the future and the only way that the entertainment industry is going to survive as our lives become increasingly mediated?
I have no good answers, but I hope you do. In the meantime, check out Alyx Vesey’s rather hilarious take-down of 500 Days. I agree with her on many, almost all of the points of critique — ESPECIALLY concerning ‘Autumn’ at the end. But I still like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel — and the one glorious moment involving Han Solo — so I’m not going to say that I hated it.
Off to the pool — and when I post again, I’ll be done with comps, foot loose and fancy-free.
7 Responses to “Gossip Product Placement”
My friend Sarah (from SNN) a. reads Lainey, b. is not a crazy person, and c. would never email Lainey with racist comments. Yet she FIRMLY believes that Lainey is being paid by Summit to write that Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattison are NOT together, when in real life they are. This makes zero sense to me. Zero. I’ve wondered whether she’s being paid to write about Twilight, but I don’t think so. I think she’s getting inside information from them in exchange for promoting the series, and in return her posts increase traffic on her site, which increases the visibility of her ads, etc. I don’t really have a point here… other than to say the whole idea of who gets paid to do what is perplexing both to minivan moms and academics alike, it seems.
Really interesting point — I also doubt that Summit is paying Lainey (Summit finally has a small amount of money following the success of the first money, but they’re not the most savvy of marketers, as evidenced by the shitty trailer for New Moon). But I also think that Lainey is smart about what will attract traffic — ANY sort of traffic, whether from regular readers or people just surfing for pictures. (Nikki Finke even titles any posts to do with Twilight as “Blatant Plug for Twilight Traffic” — the more traffic, the more she can charge in ad sales). And she has better coverage of what’s going on during shooting, as she not only lives in Vancouver herself, but has a huge following of Canadian (and Vancouver-based) readers.
She also never she loves Twilight. In fact, she hates it — and the fourth book in particular. But any publicity is good publicity, so you never know. I also don’t think that Pattinson and Stewart are together — if anything, Summit WANTS them to be together, as underlined by their ban on Stewart’s PDA with her boyfriend.
And just as soon as I posted that, look what popped up on Twitter: http://www.twifans.com/photo/manipkrisrob-1?context=featured. IS IT TRUUUUUUUUUUE?
A lot of internet ads are generated from keywords in the text that they are displayed next to. Would this ad be an example of that?
It doesn’t look like Lainey has any Google Ads — they usually look like the stuff on the side of Gmail. She just has the two large ads at the top, and one of those ads is usually behind “sponsored smut” in one way or another. So no — I don’t think this just popped up on her site one day.
Hi. I’ve worked for an internet news site for a number of years and I think it’s very, very unlikely that Lainey specifically sold that ad space to any specific vendor. Many (if not most) advertising codes are inserted into a website’s template ahead of time, allowing the advertisements to be changed and adjusted to the most current and appropriate ad (by the distributor, almost certainly not by Lainey’s site itself), based on a number of considerations. Looking at Lainey’s source code, I see her site is laced with numerous automated codes similar to ones I use myself. The codes not only allow for the most efficient placement of advertising, but allow geographically targeted advertisements (i.e. ads relevant to each viewer’s region) to be automatically placed. As such, not everyone is seeing the same ads.
In my experience, it’s only in rarer cases, usually big advertiser promotions, that a website will be selling specific ad space to a specific company. As such, I’d be very surprised if that advertisement you object to was a direct sale. And while that doesn’t exclude the appearance of a conflict of interest, I think it would be very unfair to assume that is actually what’s happening here, especially since — as you say — the site is typically good about identifying sponsored posts.
Huge thanks for you insight — which highlights how much I obviously do not know about internet advertising. I suppose I assumed that the since the products on her site are so often those which she features in “sponsored smut,” I also assumed she’d know what other ads would appear on her site. Or maybe it’s just that she champions stuff with low advertising budgets. Either way, thank you.