Executive summary | Methodology | Acknowledgments | Interview
Would contextual advertising damage the credibility of online news sites? Would it harm the credibility of advertisers? Would readers even notice it? And if they do, what would they think of it? These questions, among others, were recently addressed in a research endeavor by The Seattle Times Co., partnered with the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) as part of its national project of Online Journalism Credibility, in the summer of 2009.
With the economy in free fall, ad sales plummeting and the threat of even deeper cuts looming, advertising departments throughout the news industry have been pushing the envelope in the last few months, asking newsrooms to accept new forms of commercial messages presented in new places and in new ways. Starved for cash and wary of even more layoffs, newsroom leaders have been ready to listen, particularly online, where traditional barriers between editorial and advertising are less ingrained and experimentation is easier.
The goal of the research was to better understand the relationship and interplay of news and contextual advertising and their specific effects on credibility. Specifically, it was designed to
- explore the impact of different types of contextual advertising forms, and
- understand the impact of contextual advertising in different online content sections.
For the purposes of this research, contextual advertising was defined as a somewhat newer form of advertising on the Web that takes into consideration the context of the site, a page or a search query, to display ads from advertisers that correspond to the topic. Its usual form is text-based, sometimes using hyperlinks, sometimes small graphics and brief descriptions to attract users that may be interested.
The Seattle Times conducted two online surveys and two focus group sessions in July and August 2009 (see the Methodology section for more information).
Readers find online advertising valuable
Nearly 69% of the survey respondents found online advertising had “some” or “a lot” of value when the online ads were relevant to the story or the content of the page. Without the ads, more than a third (36%) of the respondents found online advertising to be of “some’’ or “a lot’’ of value. “I think having relevant/content related ads on the page … is a great marketing medium,’’ said one survey respondent. “If I am in the mood to look at the travel page, I am also likely to want to visit one of the ad sponsors.’’
Placements of contextual ads
Contextual advertising on “soft news’’ pages, such as sports, entertainment, travel and living, was viewed less skeptically than it was on hard news pages, according to observations borne out in both the quantitative and qualitative tests. For example, four of the five pages in which more than 20% of respondents reported a decrease in credibility due to the presence of a contextual ad were pages that contained hard-news stories about politics or health. Conversely, four of the five pages in which at least 15% of respondents reported that contextual ads increased the credibility of the page were “softer’’ news pages: entertainment and travel.In the two follow-up focus groups, one respondent put it this way: “I have my own internal line between real news and sports, living and travel. When you click on a news story and suddenly there are ads on the same topic… I look at it with a small grain of salt.’’
A survey respondent drew the distinction even more starkly: “When ‘serious’ news articles are accompanied by advertising by those mentioned in the article, it makes me think the article itself was paid for and reduces the credibility of the news source for me. However, when the article is about an activity, whether it’s working out or traveling, I find it helpful to have links for more info on the same page.’’
Both the quantitative and qualitative results show that readers reacted differently to story pages than they did to index pages that contained many headlines. The two pages that scored the highest loss of credibility due to the presence of contextual ads in the online survey were both story pages. One page contained an investigative story of government policies that contributed to devastating landslides with a banner ad for a state lands commissioner candidate. The second page contained a story on a new partnership between Bastyr University and Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, alongside a banner ad touting Bastyr’s Center for Natural Health.In the survey, 32% of respondents said those ads decreased the credibility of the story pages. In answering an open-ended request for final comments, survey respondents were not shy about revealing their reactions:
"An advertisement about the very subject matter of a news article, placed right next to it, is a bit troubling," wrote one person. "Can I be satisfied that there is a clear separation between the news department and the business department? Which came first, the story or the ads?"
Readers were also troubled by both the political story page and the health story page placements. "Political ads in articles about political issues reduce the credibility of the article," one survey respondent wrote. On the Bastyr story page, a focus group participant said, "It certainly makes me read (the story) a little more skeptically."
Overall, a quarter of survey respondents were more likely to say that contextual ads decreased content credibility when the ads were on story pages, compared to only 13% of respondents who said that the presence of contextual ads decreased the credibility of an index page, which listed many headlines but did not include the text of stories.
The survey results clearly showed that readers were more interested and engaged with the story pages, suggesting that their increased level of engagement with the content may have made them more sensitive to the overall relationships between the story and the ads.
Relevance matters
In the survey, four of the five ads that had the highest favorable impact on the credibility of the page offered links or boxes for readers to learn or do more: a link to buy tickets for performances by a local dance group, a link for those interested in traveling to the tourist town of Leavenworth, Washington, a link to buy tickets to the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle and a module sponsored by Cheapflights that allowed people to book a trip online from seattletimes.com’s Travel homepage.Women in one of the two focus groups said they particularly appreciated those ads, and at least three said part of the reason was the fact that they helped inform them about local events. Men in the other focus group also said that contextual ads that were local had particular value. At least one of them cited the “Seattle-ness’’ of a contextual link in the site’s navigation as the reason he was not bothered by the unusual placement of the link.
Credibility
In an exercise conducted in the two focus groups, participants who were asked to identify advertising on Web pages had difficulty discerning what kind of content they were looking at. In the women's focus group, for example, participants said they believed that some editorial elements were advertising because "they were yellow and high on the page," because of "spacing," because of “position’’ on the page, and because an element contained a photo or graphic.When asked at the conclusion of the focus group whether it was important to have advertising content labeled, the women generally said yes. Among their responses:
"I like the transparency. It would help me pay attention to content."
"I just like to know."
"I wouldn’t click on it (an ad) if I can’t tell."
"I like to know exactly where I’m going to."
The type of label used also appeared to matter to the focus group members. "Featured partners (a label for text ads) is trying to look like content, but it's an ad," said one participant. "I didn't like the featured sponsors (label) because I didn’t know what it meant," added another:
Survey respondents expressed similar views in response to the open-ended question for additional comment on the test: "Ads that blend into the copy are too similar to the headlines lessens the story's and newspaper's credibility," said one respondent. Another respondent was happy with the Web site’s approach. "[The] Seattle Times does a good job at specifying what is advertising and I appreciate that."
Frequency
A test page that featured a story about Bastyr University’s new partnership with Group Health Cooperative, plus a banner ad for the Bastyr Center for Natural Health and a "Featured Sponsors’’ box that included a link to “Earn your 2-year medical degree at Bastyr Center for Natural Health" was too much for some focus group members. "They just seemed too related," said one woman. "The small ad for Bastyr, the big ad for Bastyr and the article… It was too much." Added another woman, “I thought it was pay for play."An open-ended response from a survey participant made this point: "Relevant, related ads are great. But if the tie-in is too direct it makes it look like the article itself is sponsored and decreases the credibility of the entire site."
Context
In the online survey, a total of 17 different examples of contextual advertisements were shown to the respondents. Overall, 13% of respondents said that the content surrounding the ads increased their credibility, while another 13% said it decreased credibility.The subject matter of the surrounding content appeared to make a difference. More than twice as many respondents to the survey said the surrounding content on the political story page decreased advertisement credibility (26%), compared to the surrounding content on the Entertainment index page (6%), the Travel index page (12%), or the Health story page (18%).
Local is better
In the majority of scenarios tested (70%) in the online survey, respondents said that the content surrounding the contextual ads neither increased nor decreased the relevance of those ads. Further analysis of those who thought that content impacted ad relevance shows that more respondents said the content increased relevance of the ads than those who said it decreased ad relevance (19% compared to 11%). No significant difference was found in ad relevance ratings within different topical areas.The relevance of the local contextual ads tested was more influenced by the surrounding content than the national contextual ads. Twenty-three percent of survey participants said the surrounding content increased the relevance of these advertisements, compared to 14% for the national advertisements tested. This finding is not surprising because The Seattle Times is a local media company and a large portion of its content is local. Local contextual advertisements will often be relevant to the local audience because of the ad content itself, in addition to the surrounding editorial content providing contextual relevance.
Effectiveness
A variety of contextual ad formats, including display ads, text banners, text links, contextual modules, text/graphic ads, and navigational link ads were tested in the research activities to further examine credibility of contextual advertising. The ad format that performed best in terms of net gain to credibility was the contextual module. The three examples of contextual modules were highly relevant to their contexts (Entertainment and Travel pages), were styled to blend in with the surrounding content, and offered utilities such as travel planning or event ticket purchasing. (Note: the contextual ad format also had the highest favorable impact on the credibility of the page, representing a win-win situation for advertisers and content creators.)Display ads were the most likely to be noticed and also received top ratings for increased ad credibility, compared to other ad formats, but the positive effect of the display ads on ad credibility was countered by an even larger negative effect on ad credibility. This finding seems to suggest that display ads have the potential for good (increasing ad credibility) when used for contextual advertising, but also have the potential for harm (decreasing ad credibility).
Survey data for ads formats that contained graphics were compared with those that contained only text. The results demonstrate slight advantages for the graphic ads in terms of positive ratings for ad credibility and ad relevance. The ads with graphics were also more likely to be noticed by respondents than those text-only ads, suggesting that may have been a factor in their level of impact.
Finally, the study shows that ads that appeared in the right-column of the page were significantly more likely to be noticed by participants (68%), compared to ads in the main content area (41%).
Although the results of the research cannot be projected to the Internet population as a whole, a number of important conclusions and key lessons could be drawn as follows:
- Online news sites can experiment with contextual advertising on their “softer’’ content pages with little, if any, effect on their site’s credibility. However, to minimize any impact on credibility and maximize the advertising’s effectiveness, news sites should make sure the contextual ads are local, useful to their readers, on story pages in particular, and limited in number.
The data for this study were collected in two parts. For the quantitative analysis, the research team of The Seattle Times Co. conducted two separate surveys, one in July 16-July 30 and the other from July 23 to August 6, 2009. The first survey consisted of responses from 524 people who responded to an intercept invitation on seattletimes.com and another 192 people in The Seattle Times’ proprietary online panel, which is operated by Ipsos. The second survey included 341 responses from seattletimes.com intercept invitations and 182 responses from the proprietary panel. Participants were eligible to receive five $100 American Express cards, which were awarded in a random drawing. (Please note that the seattletimes.com intercept group was self-selecting and, by its nature, is composed of seattletimes.com readers.)
The surveys were followed up by two focus groups held at The Seattle Times Co. offices on August 11, 2009. The participants were recruited from respondents to the online intercept study on seattletimes.com. Group one consisted of women aged 25-64; group two consisted of men aged 25-64. Each session lasted about 90 minutes. Observers were in the room with the focus groups and were allowed to ask them questions at the conclusion of the session. The participants were paid $50 each for their time and participation.
None of this work would have been possible without the help of Laura McAdoo, director of design and human factors for New Media, and Janet Farness, the Times’ director of strategic research. McAdoo and her team provided many of the ad forms and sample Web pages that became the core of what was evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively. Farness and her team oversaw the design and construction of the online survey instrument, monitored the testing, and analyzed the results. Farness moderated the two focus groups and kept the project on track.
Sarah O’Brien and Nadine Selden of The Seattle Times strategic research team put together the detailed breakdown of 1,239 responses to the surveys and O’Brien set out the key findings from both the quantitative and qualitative research. Nicole Elger Maclean, human factors manager for the Times’ New Media division, took a deep dive into the survey numbers, offering up revealing rankings and comparisons by advertising type.
Times Executive Editor David Boardman, New Media Vice President Patricia Lee Smith and Circulation/Marketing Vice President Alan Fisco generously provided time and space to allow this very complex project to be carried out efficiently. And fellow Managing Editor Suki Dardarian and Deputy Managing Editor Heidi de Laubenfels offered wise advice and counsel on how to make this happen, including introductions by de Laubenfels that brought the strategic research team on board.
Finally, none of this would have been possible without the help and support of Elaine Kramer, online credibility coordinator for APME and cat herder extraordinaire, and the generous advice and counsel of Kenneth Fleming, associate director of research for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and director of the Center for Advanced Social Research at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Questions about the study can be directed to Kathy Best, managing editor for digital news at The Seattle Times, at kbest@seattletimes.com, or Kenneth Fleming, associate director of research for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, at flemingk@missouri.edu.
The original executive summary was prepared by the strategic research team of The Seattle Times Co. under the directorship of Kathy Best. It was revised by Kenneth Fleming for posting on the Web site of RJI
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