Forbes.com Puts Ad Links in News Stories

By: Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer (AP) Forbes magazine has begun what it calls an "experiment" in the way it displays advertising on its Web site by embedding links to advertisers within news stories on Forbes.com.

Jim Spanfeller, the president of Forbes.com, said the publisher's arrangement with Vibrant Media Inc., a San Francisco-based technology company, would continue at least through the summer, after which time the publisher would decide whether to continue using the links.

The deal, which was reported in DMNews, a trade publication for the direct marketing industry, makes Forbes the first major media company to use the sponsored link technology from Vibrant Media, which also has arrangements with some 200 other Web sites including The Auto Channel, Experts-Exchange.com and Computing.Net.

Spanfeller said Forbes was comfortable using the technology on an experimental basis since the sponsored links are clearly labeled as being paid for by advertisers.

"This is an experiment in advertising," Spanfeller said. "We're not trying to blur the line between advertising and editorial, we're just trying to find out where that line is."

The technology from Vibrant automatically underlines certain keywords in Forbes.com stories that have been pre-selected and sold to advertisers. When a user puts their computer cursor over the link, which has a double-underline to distinguish it from other kinds of links, a yellow box pops up with an advertising slogan a tag identifying it as a "sponsored link."

Spanfeller said the writers and editors at Forbes do not know beforehand which words have been sold to advertisers. However, he acknowledged that writers might decide to avoid frequent use of certain keywords in stories if they see that they have triggered sponsored links on the site.

Spanfeller said that these and other considerations would be taken into account when the trial period for the arrangement with Vibrant expires at the end of the summer. He also said the site would ask users for feedback on the links.

Spanfeller also noted that Forbes.com was one of the first sites to use automatic video ads, but he acknowledged that, in hindsight, they were "kind of a dumb thing" at first since they didn't come with a "mute" button. The company made them less intrusive after getting "a lot of pushback" from users, he said.

Forbes has made other experiments online as well. In the summer of 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Forbes teamed up with a startup technology company to print special bar codes in stories and ads that would lead Web surfers to certain Internet sites when scanned with a "CueCat" device. The venture eventually failed. But he called that effort, which predated his tenure at the magazine, part of the company's efforts to innovate.

"We're up at the plate, and we're swinging. If we strike out, we move on to the next thing," he said.