And the sponsor is……

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An interesting one today (Jan 20th) in the irishmirror.ie. Now, I’m all for newbrands extracting cash wherever they can, but I do believe that there really should be a bit of transparency in those transactions as well.

On the Irish Mirror’s home page there was a news block with the captivating headline (if you’re in that market) “How to save on family camping getaways – plus amazing deals on Easter and 2016 breaks”. On clicking through it was an ‘article’ on campsites in Italy, Switzerland and France offering deals over the Easter Break. Fair enough.

mirror 2The first most notable point about the article was that all the ‘recommendations’ were confined to Eurocamp sites.

The second, but not noticeable unless you opened many of the links in the article in a second tab, was that links were being routed through redirectingat.com who say “When links in publishers’ content lead their users to click through and buy from an online retailer, we make sure they’re rewarded! “

In the bygone era when newbrands were chaperoned by the likes of Advertising Standards etc. there was an obligatory ‘advertising feature’ on articles that were sponsored – as I suggest this one is. If these articles pay wages, fair enough. But what does it do for the brand’s reputation without ‘Sponsored Content’ on these articles.

The late and great Con Houlihan once said “A man who will misuse an apostrophe is capable of anything”.

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