Update: Ok, the poll is now closed. It was close, but the “Nos” have it with 55% of the 3,437 votes cast. No IZEA ads on TechCrunch.
In 2006 PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy emailed to ask if we’d take their ads on TechCrunch. We said no and that was the end of it. Yesterday I heard from Ted again on the subject of advertising. His company, which has been renamed IZEA, wants to advertise their new RealRank service on TechCrunch.
For anyone unfamiliar with PayPerPost/IZEA and our position on them, it comes down to this: We think the core product is deeply flawed and we’ve said so many, many times. Over time the company has made policy changes that have mitigated some of the biggest issues we and others have with them. For example, they now require disclosure of paid posts, although we take issue with some of the language and the placement of the disclosure.
They are the blogging world’s pariah and are fairly routinely trashed for, as I put it, polluting the blogosphere. For more on our posts on them, see their Crunchbase profile. Here’s our first post on PayPerPost, which is representative of most of our coverage. If you have a spare couple of hours (and you’re tired of watching my sweet dancing moves), you can read all of our coverage of the company here.
Anyway, the company now has other products which we have no particular issue with (example), and RealRank, a new way to rank participating blogs since Google has basically kicked them out of the Internet, is one of them.
We’ve asked Ted if he minds us asking our readers what they think about taking advertising from IZEA on TechCrunch, and he’s agreed. So the question is, do we accept advertising from IZEA for RealRank? The poll is below. If you say it’s a bad idea, we won’t accept it (and Ted says he wouldn’t want to do it anyway since it wouldn’t be received well). If you say yes, we’ll take it.
Two quick additional points. First, yes I know that simply writing this post is a way of promoting PayPerPost. But we’re not linking to them here, and I’m pretty sure Ted isn’t super pleased with all the links to the negative posts we’ve written. Second, it should go without saying that even if we accept their advertising, it isn’t going to affect our editorial coverage of the company. In fact, I may go more negative just to prove we’re neutral, if that makes sense.
What’s your opinion? The poll will remain open for around 24 hours, and we’ll update with the final vote. If you’re wondering how I’m voting on this – well, the very first vote is a “no.” :-/
A few minutes in and it’s close: 28-24 against. Can’t wait to see how the poll turns out in the morning.
Ted has shown amazing courage given the amount of flack he has received from you and the rest of the media world. He is a marketer and knows that he can fill a void (at least is trying to) and has done nothing worse than millions of others, other than put his head above the parapet. SEO companies, traditional marketing companies, Your man Dan with his how to go viral, etc. etc. are all at it. To pick out one man and attack him so vigorously for capitalisms woes, that are essentially built into our culture, is somewhat unfair. If you want to have a rant, rant off about the politics and legal institutions that essentially allow, encourage, mandate, that we all sell our souls and play the game (all in the name of profit (and taxes)).
You should let him advertise his new services like all the other companies you allow, and I would remind you of some of the crappy (spammy) advertising I have seen on TC recently!
hey! I resemble that remark.
I checked out IZEA and it’s just a shady name change for their “Flagship Product” Pay-Per-Post.
Don’t take their $10,000.00 and become “TechCrunch, Sponsored By: Pay Per Post.”
I think that these ads should be allowed on your site. Even though I dont really like their kind of marketing as it is polluting. But so was Dan’s post few days ago and many people actually try similar kind of advertising
slow news weekend, ugh. i’ll tell you what. if these guys have money to burn? burn away brother arrington, burn away.
Deciding this via a poll of whoever fancies voting is just an invitation to IZEA to rig the results in their favour.
The decision about taking their money should be down to you, Michael, not the relative ability of IZEA and BoingBoing to mobilise their readers to vote repeatedly.
Since IZEA is clearly doomed now, I suppose it doesn’t make much difference.
Yes MA I can feel for you too. You have taken your pile of poo with the best of them from ‘the general public’ (and a fair bit from myself!).
But all that aside.. I can feel something in the air. It’s time for a change. I better get back to that application I’m building…
Even if IZEA “wins,” do you want to alienate half of your blog-stalkers? Providing the opportunity to deny an advertiser is like giving candy to the Rugrats. Do you take candy away from babies, Michael? Do you??
From their site:
“Solution sales team
If you are an agency or brand that requires a solution outside of our self service marketplace our Solution Sales Team is here to help. Our team will work with your agency or brand to craft a customized strategy that maximizes your exposure across all IZEA’s social marketing properties.
Solution sales are limited to engagements of $25,000 or greater”
They just need to land one company to make it worthwhile. Please just let them go away. Let them play in another corner of the internet, the dusty corner near the bottom.
Stop bringing them up. People come here to see what’s new and what’s next, you’re in a different league. Next time you are unsure of which direction to steer the TC Ship, ask Erick, not the internet.
Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas
Two quibbles.
1. you havent expained what type of advertisement you could be taking . is it reviewing companies/products for cash ?? or is it placing adsense like ads etc on your site but from the PPP company ?
2. Dude you need to rethink techcrunch;s posts. most of the posts iv read in the last few weeks have been non sense and not worth readin. Like you said take a holiday . there is a saying ” quality over quantity ” 1 -2 decent posts a day is better than 5 shocking worthless posts a day.
Forget about facebook, forget about PPP and all those companies you have covered atleast 3-4 times. Maybe you should have a rule that if you have covered a company more than 4 times already , you should not cover again. would certainly save alot of drivvle being written and alot of your readers complains.
Yes, but only if it’s not contra for IZEA posts praising TechCrunch.
I disagree with the sentence “In fact, I may go more negative just to prove we’re neutral, if that makes sense.” Surely then the taking of advertisements is affecting editorial coverage, even if it is in the opposite direction to what most would object to.
Taking advertisements is fine by me but don’t let if affect editorial coverage at all.
So the real dilemma here is…should I take $20k or not?
Does TechCrunch choose the ads that appear next to their content? Ads like Ads-Click, a tag-cloud monetisation system.
To be honest I think advertising influences content whether it is direct like PayPerPost or indirect like AdSense, Pronet etc. You cannot remain uninfluenced when it hits your bottom line.
Michael, you are not running a democracy here! If your vote is a no… then no it is! stand by your principles man! sounds like you want to say no, but the money element might be tempting you… so asking users, if they say yes, you will have an excuse to go ahead… its a fork in the road for you… follow the light and don’t sell out (whatever is left of not selling out anyway!). Remember… TC is your blog… well, its now a business… but it started out as your blog… your readers deserve integrity back for the loyalty they show you. If you have not got a moral issue with payperpost and really want to take their money… do it via another means… don’t pollute TC further! its your choice… you asking the question might be forgiven if you forgiven by your readers if you say you had a moment of human weakness for the money… selling out (even via just supporting) will be unforgivable! and don’t give us rubbish about you might be even more negative… its like, i’ll bang my head against the wall, but don’t worry.. i’ll have twice as many headache pills to negate the effect!
The very fact that you are running a poll suggest that deeply you want it to turn out as a yes. It’s OK to be money hungry, just don’t use the community to justify your ambiguous moral stands.
How silly. If by having the advert you’re going to be going overly negative to make up for it, whats the point? The ongoing battle you two seem to have is being used by you both now. Are we going to get a say in the inclusion of other adverts? If not, then this feud has been used to try and MAKE a news story out of something which should never have become one. Can’t wait until tomorrows post where we get to vote on Michael Arrington’s outfit.
I second mage..
everything he says makes real sense..
TC reach (at least the RSS numbers that Feedburner widget on top right of this page) is going down (from 625k to 599 last week and 595k today) and cash seems to come hard to come by as economy tightens. The new CEO and co-editor don’t come cheap either. I am not criticizing the situation, happens to every business. I just have issues with the fact that you wash dirty laundry in public and now you want to charge for it (and taking the readers for a ride at the same time).
Stop the game Michael. Take the money and use it well to further TC goals. And if possible, be honest about it.
I couldn’t be more disappointed with this post. It only shows that there’s no separation whatsoever between editorial and commercial here on TechCrunch. Of course the company should be accepted! As long as it does not deal with porn, rate, racism, etc it should be a nobrainer – in fact, the editors shouldn’t even have access to who will be advertising, that’s neutrality. The part where Michael says he will be more negative in order to prove his neutrality (!!!) is simply pathetic.
TechCrunch wrote about the Brazilian startup boo-box in the January, and all of a sudden stopped covering the company: the seed round from a VC, the launch of an innovative video monetization tool, platform portability – all made the headlines on “competing blogs” such as Mashable and Go2web2.0. Boo-box does not appear even in the CrunchBase! Than I had a look at TechCrunch sponsors and the likes of TextLink Ads. After this post, I believe it is now clear why boo-box was “banned” from TechCrunch.
Now that’s only my oppinion. If this blog comment gets censored, it will only confirm what I suspect. TechCrunch clearly has editorial/ commercial issues and needs profissionalization fast or it will quickly loose credibility with its audience.
Rodrigo, an early boo-box informal contributor in Brazil and (yet) TechCrunch reader
If you explained what is RealRank and how did it improve PayPerPost we could more easily make the desicion.
I think that if they’re willing to pay for the ad, that you should provide the service.
Mike,
I was wondering, if somebody took out a 10k/mo advert and set up a website where people could buy a rotating spot in the advert for $1000 or less, say tcshare.us or something, would you take the money and put up iframe or dynamic codes for the rotator?
Logically, you would think that a provider would want to sell more ads and take the money, but I see you are against certain things. Would you also ban advert resellers?
I have always defended ppp simply bc their business model (while profiting themselves) actually makes a few bucks for the little guys. Their blogs are smalltime and most of the people on the other end of these have little other means of making cash. as far as integrity goes, having used ppp (to understand it better) In my experience the ethical argument don’t stack up. I’ve had critical posts from their community where it was justified. Go figure, I paid for it too. To imply all their bloggers are unethical is one step too far.
MA might well need the cash (who don’t) judging by some of the quality of other ads, so go get it mike and expand expand expand. Just dont forget the little guy…
Michael, the fact that this is a poll means you don’t really care financially how this goes… that is a wonderful position to be in but this is YOUR company, as such, YOU should make the decision… not let the 100s of IP Marketers out of India affecting your polls
You are in an envious position my friend… one that many blogs would find rather hard to say no to… so the real question is, why isn’t Ted going after lesser known sites which would charge a fraction of what TC does but together represented even more traffic with greater diversity “advertising” IZEA?
Jon
Very responsible behaviour to profile advertising clients.
http://tekno-wo...ld.blogspot.com
Is Techcrunch in business to make money or not? Does IZEA promote anything as horrific as clubbing baby seals? If you answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’, then your decision is rather clear, isn’t it. Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to stifle your biased comments. How many newspapers have anti-business editorials while happily accepting dollars for ads placement?
Go for it, sir!
It’s a free country… and I don’t need Techcrunch to be my moral conscience. I don’t like what those companies do, so I ignore them, like I ignore most of the other ads.
I’d take ads from anyone. $ is $.
Poll is flawed. They posted this link on their forums. Of course all their posties re now coming here and voting in favor of the ads.
Geez Mike, by the end of 24 hours, every loyal postie they have will have voted in favor of ads because you said you’d do whatever side wins.
This is your site, you should have just made the decision. You said the first vote was no, that should have been it.
Hope you enjoy being one of Ted’s shills.
Take them marketing dollars. Take them!
Take their dollars if you feel you need the extra income (which I doubt) and you are convinced that their ads won’t cheapen your websites.
But if you’re wrong, your popularity and reputation will suffer gravely.
Fancy risking that for a couple more thousand in profits?
Only if they pay!
What kind of childish question is this? Either it’s a business decision — then you make it. Why ask your readers? Or it’s a decision based on your opinion re: PPP and the impression you believe this would make on your readership. Then it’s also your call.
Asking for a vote a) is trying to shirk responsibility and b) reminds me of children squabbling on the playground and trying to get a “gang” together just to them go “nyer-nyer-nyer-nyer” to the other kid.
Be professional about this!
Dan.
I think approach might lead to a good discussion.
What amazes me, a year and a half later and TC still cannot keep from slanting the wording used to describe PPP, (Izea). From the beginning, it’s been a war of words-a one-sided war. Now that Google has “punished” those who write paid content, or accept paid ads, Michael again has failed to mention the fact that it wasn’t just PPP users who were hit-we just happened to be a very large group, with very large voices. Some of the highest-paid A-List bloggers were hit, (John Chow to name one), who do not utilize PPP services. Blogs and other sites were hit who have never written a paid post. The “poll” is simply his way of keeping the little war going, maybe due, in part, for the lack of decent content on TC lately. Stirring the pot brings in more readers and more readers, (hopefully in his mind), brings in more revenue. The poll makes no difference, he’s made up his mind. It’s either a “no”, or greed will win over and he’ll decide to accept the offer.
You’re running a business, Michael. Accept the business proposition or don’t. We won’t think any less of you than we already do.
So a blogging pariah network justifiably gets kicked off the web, develops its own internal site ranking system for all the bloggers who use its terrible product, and now it wants to advertise the ranking system which only tracks these bloggers?
Can you explain what, exactly, made you think it would even be a good idea to ask? If the company and its core product are not only flawed, but doing a detrimental service to the blogging and journalistic worlds, a ranking system for its product isn’t going to do any good.
PayPerPost/IZEA got kicked off the web for a good reason. Don’t help it scramble its way back on.
TAKE THE MONEY
Get some balls, Arrington. This is the problem with this whole egalitarian-Web 2.0 – Silicon Valley culture. Your the boss. You also don’t rely on user-generated content as the bulk of TechCrunch’s value to readers; you actually pay people to report and break stories. If your vote is ‘no’, the policy should be no. No reader of your site has visibility into your business or knows where you want to take it. What readers think of your advertising policy is totally irrelevant.
Interesting poll. I was never a fan of payperpost but if they are doing something else now, I don’t see what the problem is. I mean, as people have been point out there are flaws with the company and it’s products, but if they are trying to come back with something, maybe give them a chance?
I think think anyone sees an advertisement as an endorsement.
I think a few weeks ago, google started penalizing blogs that have “paid links” and do participate in “pay-per-post”.
A “yes” may very well imply less traffic from google (and maybe other search engines)… I’m not sure i understand google’s decision (is it good or bad?), but i would think what is most valuable to techcruch: cash or traffic?
BTW, i voted no.
Cheers.
While I don’t think it’s entirely fair to IZEA to be subjected to a thumbs up or down from the peanut gallery (as far as I know, no other ads that appear on Techcrunch have been voted on this way…), I see this as related to the viral marketing blow up — in the absence of clearly defined principles about how to market online, Techcrunch is looking to readers to guide them on acceptable behavior.
Not optimal, but better than nothing.
Looks like you already did the deal, why poll us when it doesn’t matter? Link or not you talked about the service and now we all know about it, sounds like advertising to me.
Oh yeah, this post after Dan’s YouTube post which you still haven’t given your opinion on the other day, looks like TC is just getting bought left and right by whoever throws the most money at you. We really don’t care anymore about your “appearance” of fairness.
It sounds like you’ve already made the decision to take them, and just want your readers to say “yea fine”.
If you’re conflicted about being morally opposed, but want the money it’ll bring in, it’s more than likely that you’ve already chosen the money and just feel a quick debate will help you do that.
I share your opposition to PPP for, as you put it “polluting the blogosphere” but why the poll? Just go with your gut. My gut tells me you’ll regret it.
My blog is brand new, so I have less to lose, but I still wouldn’t use their services after slating them in previous posts. It’s amazing how quickly an opinion desolves when someone waves a dollar at you.
Let them advertise. I don’t it’s necessarily a bad idea.
As long as they disclose it somewhere. You should probably suggest them a place where they should disclose the “Paid blog” notice as a condition to get listed on your ad network.
Another point of view would be, some one could really love to write about a product or company, but we are all lazy. A bit of earning possibility can let many people put good reviews out there.
And any ways, we are living with many such silly concepts..e.g. Fine Print – invented by media. The most important notes are printed in tiny fonts no one can read.
On the other hand, if it is clearly spelled out that it is sponsored, and there are 6-figures in it annually, it seems like your users would understand. But it seems like you have clear misgivings. But don’t think you can go more “negative” on their product or business model to make you appear neutral; the fact that TechCrunch is a distribution partner is 100% validation that their model works. What more validation does a new business model need than that the business proposition is impossible to resist even by people who profess to not like the principles of the model. It seems like IZEA is a really good business, even if it’s bad product. This is the exact opposite of most Web 2.0 companies. Great product, lousy business.
Ugh. Michael, please do yourself and the rest of the blogosphere a favor and reject these guys. Their flagship product, Pay Per Post, censors bloggers. Let’s not get into bed with the devil we already know.