How Do You Feel About Sponsored Posts?
Posted by NoleCC
I was reading through my RSS feeds yesterday when I started to see the beginning of the EA Sports sponsored posts at SB Nation. Mind you, this isn’t just Tomahawk Nation, but a network wide sponsorship deal with EA guiding the topics of one post per day for the duration of the week.
I’m curious, how do readers feel about that? Does it change your view of the article at all? How do you feel about it vs. regular advertising?
Me? I’ve been offered similar types of posts and avoided them, however, I don’t have a problem with it especially when a site spells out the fact that it’s a sponsored post. From Tomahawk Nation’s post Where I Come From:
This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.Happy Independence Day Weekend! This is our first post of NCAA Football 11 sponsored posts throughout the week. During the series, we value your input greatly.
To me, that’s a good way to handle things. Up front, the reader knows that EA is guiding a topic through sponsorship. From the various SB Nation blogs that I read, it also appears that while the posts are sponsored the content is just as honest, funny or asinine as normal. Carolina March is another that comes to mind for handling the week well and being up front with readers.
Let me know how you feel about sponsored posts in a comment.
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Jdogg on 
Chauncy on 
Redman on 
I believe it is the way of the future. A way to integrate the shill of spammy ad blogs with blogs written by real people. That said, I hate it. I get my news from the internet so I don’t have to flip through dozens of ads in the local newspaper. I go to blogs because I hate the pop-up and moving ads on ESPN, Yahoo, etc. Now the ads are following me – and disguised as news!
Soon independent blogs will be a thing of the past. Me? I don’t think I could figure out how to put an ad on my site if I tried. And who clicks those anyway?
Judging from my all time Adsense revenue stats, not many people click ‘em. lol.
If it is there but not obstructive to easily navigating the website or too distracting, if it keeps the site free, I’m all for it.
I think it depends on how the site does it. If they are good about it and the sponsored posts are good, or if they also offer other content simultaneously, and they don’t hide that it is sponsored, why not?