Disingenuous positioning of sponsored article

[MachinistMark]

My attention was caught by a thread in the lounge about a sponsored article about AWS, and I wanted to raise my concerns about how the sponsored article itself has been posted.

The article has been marked as the Most Read article on the site, but when I scroll through the list of articles posted on the date this one was posting, it doesn't exist. This means that the only way to access the article is by clicking on the Most Read article section. How does a post become the most read if it can't be read unless you open it from it's position as most read?

If that's where a sponsored article has to go, then surely the first word in the headline should be the word "Sponsored", ideally in capital letters? The way it's been posted here feels deceptive. I appreciate that it's marked as sponsored inside the article, but that's after the adverticle gets to make it's impression.

I'm not even going to raise my issues with the article, because the Lounge thread covers them fairly effectively. I want to focus on how this feels fake. We all know you have bills to pay, I suspect even the most staunchly anti-advertising among us wouldn't begrudge the site posting this in your main article listings and letting it stand by itself (with an open comment section for people to state their displeasure with it), rather than giving it the prime position that should be given to the articles that people are actually engaging with, whether it's this article or another.

 

[Aurich]

Yeah, we fixed that this morning.

So what happened is a basic oversight: it never occurred to us that one of these non-front page sponsored pieces would get enough traffic to get into our most read box, so we didn't think to add code to exclude them.

When we spotted that it had happened this morning we added that flag. There was no intention to fool or trick anyone, just a bug.

 

[spacekobra]

Is it also the case that subscribers don't even see those sponsored pieces? I didn't even know you ran those.

 

[MachinistMark]

Yeah, we fixed that this morning.

So what happened is a basic oversight: it never occurred to us that one of these non-front page sponsored pieces would get enough traffic to get into our most read box, so we didn't think to add code to exclude them.

When we spotted that it had happened this morning we added that flag. There was no intention to fool or trick anyone, just a bug.

Ah, that's fair. I assumed because it wasn't in the article listing it must have been only on that slot in Most Read. Where on earth was it? Posted to social media or something?

 

[Aurich]

Those sponsored pieces are not new. As I said in another thread I cannot remember how long we've been doing them, but well over a decade easily. They're clearly marked as such at all times. (Not in the headline, but that's normally not an issue!)

The fact that most people aren't really aware is by design. We don't sneak them into our editorial flow or anything. Obviously it happened here, but it was just a mistake.

If you are not a subscriber you still don't see them in our story mix, but I think it's possible you might get an ad unit promoting them? And yeah, I think they might get promoted on social. I honestly am not sure, I'm on a total break from all social media, so I don't know what's being posted these days.

My guess though is our zombie X account might post them as ads? I mean ... whatever lol.

I think they're treated more like "whitepapers", where it's not really about getting general public eyeballs on them, and more like using Ars resources to host or write things for industry insiders that are promoted through industry channels. I'm speculating here, it's not really my job to know or care about that side of it.

I am involved at times in working on them. You probably never saw this graphic I made for an IBM one for instance:



I actually enjoyed doing that, it was a chance to keep dinking around in Blender and get paid for it. But just to be clear, if I work on something like that, or an Ars writer is part of something it's always entirely separate from our editorial work. For me it's just client work, not really different from any other side work I do outside of Ars.

Doing a render of a brain with a ribbon wrapping around it for IBM, or designing the artwork for the Predator pinball, both 2025 projects I did, both things you don't need to even know about to enjoy being here at Ars.

The tl;dr is don't worry about it, nothing is changing. Just adding a little transparency and context to try and be reassuring.

 

[Aurich]

For anyone who's never seen one of these sponsored pieces and is curious, just to show you how much they're not designed to trick you:



They're labeled as sponsored twice up at the top, and we even run them in a different type face than normal articles. You get an "Ars-like" experience for your sponsor dollars, but ain't nobody actually thinking it's our story.

 

[MachinistMark]

That makes sense.

I hope you understand that the reason I've made this post (and probably been a bit more confrontational than I intended) is because I know you guys are generally very open when it comes to your editorial standards, and those standards are a big part of why we are all here. From the perspective I had this morning it looked an awful lot like a miss, and that's why I felt so compelled to speak.

 

[Aurich]

That makes sense.

I hope you understand that the reason I've made this post (and probably been a bit more confrontational than I intended) is because I know you guys are generally very open when it comes to your editorial standards, and those standards are a big part of why we are all here. From the perspective I had this morning it looked an awful lot like a miss, and that's why I felt so compelled to speak.

All good, everyone waiting for one more thing they love to get ruined somehow in 2025.

Genuine oversight, no creeping awfulness here!

 

[Galeran]

[...] ain't nobody actually thinking it's our story.

Except perhaps when someone is reviewing citations in, say, a Wikipedia article or an consultant's report? "Oh, arstechnica.com? Yeah, they're legit." Appreciate your efforts to keep the slope from allowing too much slippage, but there's definitely some.

 

[Aurich]

Except perhaps when someone is reviewing citations in, say, a Wikipedia article or an consultant's report? "Oh, arstechnica.com? Yeah, they're legit." Appreciate your efforts to keep the slope from allowing too much slippage, but there's definitely some.

One would hope if you were reviewing citations that you'd notice all the sponsored text though. It's hard to see a situation where the link is important enough to matter, but also nobody bothers to actually look at it.

I think what I would say is when it comes to "advertorial" there are ethical ways to do it, and slimy ways to do it. I feel like we're firmly on the ethical side.

We don't slip it into our story flow to make you think it's our editorial (this bug aside!). We clearly mark what it is prominently at the top of the page, and while changing the font to serifs is perhaps subtle I personally find it a gratifying switch up. No advertiser has ever noticed or cared that I'm aware of, but I care lol.

I hear your edge case, it's certainly possible, but it doesn't feel like a real enough issue to be a concern.

 

[Galeran]

One would hope if you were reviewing citations that you'd notice all the sponsored text though. It's hard to see a situation where the link is important enough to matter, but also nobody bothers to actually look at it.

That's fair... someone actually tasked with verifying citations should definitely be following the links and reading for comprehension. I don't do that when reading Wikipedia, but I'm not (usually) editing Wikipedia.