Web Ads Appear On Racy Sites Despite Checks
Last month, Verizon Communications Inc. was surprised to find one of its Internet ads on a MySpace.com page with photos of scantily clad women. Walt Disney Co. was unaware that its ad was next to an article about male sexual performance on About.com. Jobs Web site Monster.com didn't realize its spot was on a site that appeared to be offering unauthorized downloads of copyrighted music and videos. Once they found out, all three yanked their ads.
Most big companies have strict rules to prevent their ads from appearing alongside sexual, political, illegal or hateful material on television and in newspapers and magazines. But these days, the free-wheeling content on the Internet is sorely testing those restrictions because of the way many ads for small sites are sold through middlemen that don't always carefully monitor where the ads are posted.
"There needs to be better accountability and more oversight of this," says Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe. Disney wouldn't comment beyond stating that the ads were misplaced. Monster.com says it regularly reviews placement of its online ads, but "the challenge of ensuring the integrity of each and every placement continues to grow," said spokeswoman Danielle Perry, whose company, like the others, was alerted to these particular incidents by a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Companies and their ad agencies over the years have developed ways to monitor their print and TV ads. For TV, advertisers have lists of shows they won't buy into -- often those with controversial content. In both print and TV, marketers buy ads on condition their spots don't run adjacent to certain content -- such as news of a tragedy.
Advertising on the Internet isn't as clear-cut. Marketers typically place ads directly with Google Inc., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Microsoft Inc.'s MSN and Yahoo Inc. But for tens of thousands of smaller Web sites that accept ads, companies or their ad agencies turn to online advertising networks.
Advertisers like these networks because it allows them to buy cheap spots across a wide array of sites. The networks also let advertisers target Web sites that draw a certain demographic, such as young men. Top networks can represent upward of 10,000 Web sites.
But that makes it difficult for companies and even ad networks to be certain where ads are placed. Industry experts say that some Web sites sign up to carry ads using an innocuous name for their site but then place the ads on another more risqué Web site that draws more traffic. Because Web sites earn money based on the number of people who view the ad, a racy Web site with more viewers can mean higher revenue.
"In online advertising it is not 100% possible to make sure that an ad is not being displayed on a wrong Web site," says Michiel Beenen, chief executive of BannerConnect.net, a Dutch online advertising network.
Most ad networks say they review the sites in their network regularly to check for inappropriate content. But David Herpers, chief marketing officer for Amerisave Mortgage Corp. says he bought an ad that appeared on MySpace from a network that promised to run them on "loans and money and finance" sites. Yet in the past month, Amerisave learned that its ad was adjacent to a photo of the male anatomy on a page on MySpace. "It's really alarming....I had no idea that this could conceivably happen," Mr. Herpers says.
After The Wall Street Journal found one of its ads inappropriately placed on MySpace, Dow Jones & Co., which owns the Journal, said it plans in keeping with its policy to ask for the ad's removal, a spokesman said.
MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., says that the personal Web profiles by its more than 50 million members can be racy. But it's building new sections of the site for movies and music. "You'll see us roll out more and more traditional controlled content of the kind that advertisers expect," says Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, which oversees MySpace.
Glitches have occurred for mundane reasons. The Christian Children's Fund bought ads on the largest online ad network, Advertising.com, which is owned by AOL, and specified that the ads not appear near any provocative content. But Advertising.com says it mistakenly turned off its content filters for an unspecified period of time last month, and the Christian Children's Fund ad ended up next to an article about a sexual position in the sex section of About.com, which is owned by New York Times Co. The Disney ads were also placed by Advertising.com on About.com's sex section during that time.
"It slipped through the cracks and should not have happened," says Advertising.com spokeswoman Mollie Spilman. About.com says its sexual content section will be excluded from its across-the-site ad purchases.
Complicating matters, ad networks often buy groups of ads from other networks. Monster.com, for instance, bought ad space from ValueClick Inc., the second-largest ad network in terms of reach. But ValueClick ended up placing some of Monster.com's order through a smaller network called ASN, owned by privately-held Broadspring Inc. ASN then ran the ads on Web site emp3s.com, which appears to be offering free downloads of copyrighted music and movie clips. Emp3s.com, which is registered to a Korean address, didn't respond to an email request for comment.
ASN says that it isn't sure how emp3s.com got into its network but that it took the site out as soon as its "questionable nature" was brought to its attention. ValueClick says it has terminated its relationship with ASN. Monster.com's Ms. Perry declined to comment on the future of her company's relationship with ValueClick.
ValueClick says it is coming out with new technology that prevents Web sites from signing up with an innocuous domain and then moving the ads to a more risqué site.
The problem is unlikely to be solved soon. Dozens of ad networks last year sold more than $700 million of online ads, industry experts estimate. The Internet is the fastest-growing segment of the ad industry, up 30% in 2005 to $12.5 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a group that represents Web publishers and online ad networks.
"Two years ago I was buying ads for 10 cents per thousand viewers," says Pesach Lattin, chief executive of the small ad network Icon Advertising Solutions. "There's no way I can get that now. It's 75 cents to $1 on the major networks. So if you open a network you are going to make money."
Some ad buyers say errors are par for the course. Gordy Abel, vice president of marketing for media buying giant Aegis Group's Carat Fusion, says he once mistakenly bought ads for a banking client that appeared on a terrorist Web site because he used an ad network.
"I wish...there was a fail-safe program to make sure it wouldn't happen, but it's not there yet," Mr. Abel says. "This happens. It's like losing luggage."
网上广告遭遇色情之扰
上个月，Verizon Communications Inc.惊讶地在MySpace.com的一个网页上发现了公司的一幅广告，而这个网页上还登著一位衣著暴露的女子的照片。迪斯尼被告知，它的广告出现在About.com网站上，广告紧靠著一篇有关男性色情表演的文章。就业招聘网Monster.com事先也不知道它的广告所在的网站好像在提供版权音乐和音像的非法下载服务。这三家公司在得知上述情况后立刻撤回了广告。
多数大公司严格禁止他们的广告与色情、政治、违法或有害内容一起出现在电视节目或报刊杂志上。但如今，互联网上丝毫不受约束的内容对这些规定提出了巨大挑战，这是因为，许多登在小网站上的广告是通过中间商代理销售的，这些代理商不能保证仔细监视发布广告的网站。
Verizon发言人埃里克?拉伯(Eric Rabe)说，需要对这种现象追究更多责任，加以更多的监督。迪斯尼公司只说广告被放错了地方，此外不愿做更多评论。
Monster.com发言人丹尼乐?佩里(Danielle Perry)说，它会经常审查网上广告的状态，但确保每个广告、每次广告都登载得准确无误是越来越难了。Monster.com和其他几家公司一样，是通过《华尔街日报》记者才知道上面提到的“错登事件”的。
企业及广告代理商数年来开发出了监控印刷媒体和电视广告投放情况的方法。以电视为例，广告主会有一个他们不愿播放广告的节目清单，这通常都是些内容有争议的节目。不论是印刷媒介还是电视媒介，广告代理商都会注意不让他们的时段/版面跟某些特定内容紧靠在一起，比如悲剧新闻等。
但互联网广告就没这么明确了。对于Google Inc.、时代华纳(Time Warner Inc.)旗下的美国在线(AOL)、微软(Microsoft Inc.)的MSN及雅虎(Yahoo Inc.)等大型网站来说，广告商通常会将广告直接交给他们处理，但对成千上万的小网站来说，发布广告的企业或他们的广告代理商会通过网上广告联盟去做。
广告主喜欢这些广告联盟是因为它们能购买一系列网站的廉价广告位。这些广告联盟还能让广告主找到能吸引某些特定年龄段受众的网站。一流的广告联盟能给客户提供10,000多家网站。
但这同时也使得广告主甚至广告联盟很难确定广告登载的位置。业内人士说，一些广告联盟在签署协议时用的网站名字无伤大雅，但随后他们会将广告登到另外的有淫秽内容的网站上，以吸引更多流量。由于这些广告联盟是根据广告页浏览次数收取广告费的，因此，浏览量高的色情网站能带来更高的广告收入。
荷兰网上广告联盟BannerConnect的首席执行长迈克尔?比耐(Michiel Beenen)说，对网上广告来说，很难百分之百保证广告不会被错登。
大多数广告网站联盟都表示，他们会定期审核联盟中的网站，以避免出现不当内容。但Amerisave Mortgage Corp.的首席营销长大卫?赫伯斯(David Herpers)说，他从一个网站联盟那里购买了出现在MySpace上的广告，这个联盟承诺将在“贷款、理财及融资”站点上刊登其广告。不过在上个月，Amerisave发现其广告在MySpace的网页中同一个男性裸体的照片排在一起。赫伯斯说，“这确实敲响了警钟，我以前真没有想到会出现这种情况。”
在《华尔街日报》发现道琼斯公司(Dow Jones & Co.)的一条广告不适当地出现在MySpace上之后，该公司发言人表示，公司计划按照其政策要求撤下这个广告。《华尔街日报》是道琼斯公司的出版物之一。MySpace则是新闻集团(News Corp.)建立的网站。
MySpace表示，由5,000多万会员建立的个人网页可能存在色情内容。但网站正在建设电影和音乐方面的新网页。负责管理MySpace的Fox Interactive Media的总裁罗斯莱文森(Ross Levinsohn)说，你将会看到我们越来越多地推出了广告客户希望看到的用传统方式控制的内容。
一些小故障是由于简单的失误造成的。Christian Children's基金在最大的网络广告联盟Advertising.com上购买了广告，并特别注明不能出现在色情内容附近。但Advertising.com称，它在上个月的某个时间里因失误关闭了内容过滤器，结果导致Christian Children's基金的广告出现在About.com一篇关于色情文章旁边。当时迪斯尼的广告也被Advertising.com放置在About.com色情内容的网页中。Advertising.com是AOL旗下的网站。About.com是纽约时报公司(New York Times Co.)主办的网站。
Advertising.com的发言人莫莉?斯皮尔曼(Mollie Spilman)说，这是本不应该发生的意外情况。About.com称，跨网站刊登的广告应该不会出现在色情网页。
复杂的情况是，广告网站联盟还常常从其它广告联盟购买大量广告。比如，Monster.com购买了访问用户数排名第二的广告网络联盟ValueClick Inc.的广告空间。但ValueClick通过一个叫做ASN的小网络联盟刊登了一些Monster.com的广告。ASN属于私人持股公司Broadspring Inc。ASN随后在提供免费下载享有版权的音乐和电影片断的网站emp3s.com上刊登了一些广告。Emp3s.com的注册地在韩国，该网站没有回复要求置评的电子邮件。
ASN称，不清楚emp3s.com如何进入了其联盟中，但在注意到该网站的性质存在争议后，就剔除了该网站。ValueClick称，已终止了同ASN的关系。Monster.com的佩里对其公司同ValueClick未来的关系不予置评。
ValueClick表示，正在采取新技术，防止网站用合法域名注册然后将广告移到色情站点。
这个问题恐怕难以很快得到根治。业内专家预计，数十个广告联盟去年共销售了超过7亿美元的网上广告。根据网站发布商和网上广告网络联盟的行业组织Interactive Advertising Bureau的数据，互联网是增长最快的广告领域，2005年的收入增长30%，达到125亿美元。
一家小广告联盟Icon Advertising Solutions的首席执行长佩萨克?拉汀(Pesach Lattin)说：“两年前我购买广告的价格是每1000访问用户数0.10美元，现在根本无法获得这个价格了。主要网络联盟的价格为0.75至1美元。因此如果你开个网络联盟可能会赚上一笔。”
部分广告买家表示，这个过程中出现失误是正常的。传媒巨头Aegis Group旗下Carat Fusion的营销副总裁戈迪?阿贝尔(Gordy Abel)说，由于他使用了一个广告联盟，一次他为银行客户购买的广告错误地出现在恐怖分子的网站上。
阿贝尔说：“我希望，能有一种自动防错程序确保不会出现问题，但目前还没有。这种情况时有发生，就像丢失行李一样。”
