Are There News Publication Implications To Paid Search?

from the questions,-questions... dept

On Friday, the news about the problems with Merck's Vioxx drug broke. Saturday morning I heard an ad from a lawfirm looking to round up Vioxx-taking clients for a case against Merck. Lawyers, these days, know how to spring into action for class-action lawsuits. Making a radio commercial takes a little bit of time, however. Buying up paid search ads can be done in just a few minutes. CBS Marketwatch notes that the fee to buy the keyword "Vioxx" shot up very quickly over the weekend as law firms sought to find clients for any such case. Still, going one step beyond that, E-Media Tidbits is wondering if this, combined with the rise in contextual advertising, will eventually influence story selection for news sites. That post links to a couple of news stories about the drug recall news that show lawyer ads with the story. While the fear is that this will somehow influence story selection, that seems a little overblown. While there clearly are sites out there designed specifically to try to make money off of contextual advertising by picking topics associated with high cost-per-clicks those are clearly there just to pick up the clicks. For a regular news publisher, it's unlikely that any single topic is going to generate enough clicks and revenue to have a publisher put pressure on a reporter or writer to cover that specific story.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    bob, 6 Oct 2004 @ 5:07am

    Fast lawyers

    You heard an ad on Saturday after the Vioxx announcement? There's a lawyer that advertises fairly heavily on TV (some local, some cable) here in Dallas that was running Vioxx-related client solicitation ads for at least a week BEFORE the announcement - he's especially interested in people who have actually had heart attacks...

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.