Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 10:55:25 -0700 From: Chuck Munson To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Anatomy of a Netscam: Why Your Internet Search May Not Be = as Honest as You Think The following is being sent with permission of the author. --Chuck Munson (Univ. of Maryland College Park Libraries) ------------- Anatomy of a Netscam Why Your Internet Search May Not Be as Honest as You Think By David Corn Sunday, July 7 1996; Page C05 The Washington Post CAN YOU own a word? On the Internet you can. As the Internet expands, with an explosion of Web sites, cyber-entrepreneurs have tried mightily to figure out how to cash in. The problem has been that Web culture, so far, is antagonistic to charging money for information. Only a few information-providers -- mainly pornographers -- have been able to entice Web-scanners to pay for access, and conventional advertising on the Web has yet to prove itself. Consequently, corporations looking to squeeze profits out of travel on the information highway have been concocting creative schemes. And one of the more imaginative notions -- which relies on a pitch bordering on false advertising -- bodes ill for anyone who fears that the Net might become over-commercialized and that deep-pocketed parties might find ways to exert control over the as-of-yet unwieldy cyber-world. Last year, Iron Mountain Global Information Systems (IMGIS), an "interactive target marketing" firm based in Irvine, Calif., bought up exclusive rights to specific words in the leading search services for the WorldWide Web. To understand the significance of this maneuver, you have to be familiar with how the Web works. When someone signs on to the Web, often the first place he or she turns is a site that searches the rest of the Web. These "search engines" go by such names as Yahoo!, Lycos, and Webcrawler. At one of these sites, you type in one or more words to describe the sort of information you want. Then the search service provides you a list -- it can be quite long -- of sites related to the key words. Yahoo! and the other search engines are the key gateways on the Internet. For the right price, they will share their gatekeeping power with advertisers. IMGIS purchased the rights to 55 words related to politics: among them, "elections," "Democrat," "Republican," "president" and "Congress." So when subscribers to the leading search engines request a search based on one of the words, a flashy banner appears at the top of the resulting page, promoting a "Top 10 Political Sites" list. Click on the image and and you are transported to a page with colorful displays for the top-10 political sites. Click on any of these miniature billboards, and you "travel" to the actual site for one of the top-tenners: the Democratic National Committee, the Political Hotline and -- surprise -- George magazine. What is a bit sleazy is that this "top 10" listing is not based on any qualitative or quantitative measure. It is not the 10 most popular political sites with cybersurfers. Nor is it an expert's judgment of the 10 best political sites. It is, in actuality, a listing of 10 political sites that are willing to pay IMGIS to be included on the list. IMGIS charges $3,000 a month for the display space at the top of the Top 10 page; spots further down go for less. And on Yahoo! -- the most popular search engine -- the initial banner that directs a consumer to the Top 10 site is not even labeled as an advertisement. The bottom-line: IMGIS is buying up key words in order to push Internet traffic to its clients' sites. Internet users aren't defenseless. Below the colorful "Top 10" banner there is a listing of all relevant Web sites and this list can be easily scanned. IMGIS is banking on the hope that many people will not go that far. "Seventy percent of all people looking for information will click on our [top 10] ad," says Danielle Striker, the director for sales at IMGIS. That is, they will follow the ad rather than select a site from the list produced by the search. As of the end of June, the IMGIS top 10 site was filled, with ads for the New York Times and Politics Now (a project of The Washington Post, ABC News, the National Journal, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times) occupying the two most prominent positions. Both the Democratic and Republican parties were there. But not all of the top 10 sites had paid for their space. Several, including the Times and the GOP, were taking advantage of a free trial offer. The Democratic Party was listed even though it had informed IMGIS it was not interested. Jeff Quiggle, the manager of the Electronic Policy Network, a collection of progressive Web sites, noted that his outfit, which had accepted a free trial run in the Top 10 list, would not pay to remain on the list. "My concern," says Quiggle, "is that you wind up calling something a top 10 site when it only lists sites that can afford to pay. And you get a list that is weighted to conservatives because that's where the money is." Paul DeBenedictis, president for new media at Hachette Filipacchi, publisher of George, says that he has no such concern and that George deserves to be on any top-10 political site. George, he adds, has paid IMGIS to be there through the November elections. To date, IMGIS has spent $2.5 million purchasing key words from the search services. Besides its 55 political terms, it has also snatched up the rights to a number of words related to banking, finances, sports and real estate. (Striker declines to say how many.) But, according to Striker, the company got into the game early -- that means last fall -- and obtained the rights to the political words through the year 2000. The firm was clever to strike early. Some search services no longer sell exclusive rights to words. Instead, they rotate the ad traffic for a given word. The company's political-words project is clearly just the beginning of a larger effort to make money off the flow of Internet traffic. Its first endeavor of this sort was a similar initiative involving real estate-related words and real estate listings. Asked about IMGIS's Net plans, Striker replied with a laugh: "I can't go into it too heavy -- or I'll have to kill you." But, she boasts, that IMGIS is leading the way in "driving the consumer to a page." Is there anything wrong with this? Certainly, a top-10 list based only on a site's willingness to pay for an ad is not the crime of the century. But it is misleading and cheesy; some folks on the Internet toil long and hard to compile true top-10 site lists. One can hope such trickery is sniffed out by savvy netizens. More disturbing is the attempt to commercialize key access points to the Net. If one compares the Web to television and radio, it's easy to dismiss such concerns and ask, why should the Web withstand the commercial pressures that turned television and radio into ad-driven mediums? Here's why: The Internet ought to be regarded as a community resource like a library; the search engines are its card catalogue. Imagine if attached to a card for a specific book were a glowing review for another book on that subject -- and that by pushing a button the other book would be delivered to you automatically. The knowledgeable and determined reader might head into the stacks to locate the book she first came to find. But many readers might take the easier option -- and be channeled in a direction open only to those who have the money to pay for it. It is not too hard to conceive of worrisome scenarios. A pro-Republican dirty-tricks outfit could purchase rights to the word "Clinton" and then lure readers to a site full of anti-Clinton material. Or vice-versa for Bob Dole. Suppose Operation Rescue Catholic Church bought up the word "abortion" and then ran an ad declaring "abortion is murder" at the top of every page of the search results. Corporations could use all sorts of "top 10" gimmicks to bring consumers -- especially children -- to ware-peddling sites. A recent study by the Center for Media Education, a Washington-based non-profit group, found that on-line marketers have "microtargeted" children with practices that would be illegal if used in cable or broadcast television. The Web and on-line services, like America Online, have not been subject to such rules. Will young people who type "rap music" into a search request be presented with a spiffy ad that once clicked upon brings them to a site with a rappin' Joe Camel? The Internet has not been washed over yet by the wave of commercialization that dominates broadcast and cable media. There are some Net-observers who believe that the Internet, due to its consumers (who have gotten used to obtaining information for free) and its nature (decentralized and interactive) will not support a culture of advertising the way centralized media (like TV and radio) with passive audiences do. That may be true. Even so, intense corporate attempts to influence the "click-stream" on the Internet are likely to continue and should be watched, even if they may now seem trivial. The real problem is not a phony top-10 site. What is disturbing is the prospect that monied interests will devise ways to commercialize and control key portions of what is now a free-for-all and relatively egalitarian medium. That is what the people at IMGIS -- and, no doubt, other firms across the nation -- hope to do. As Striker says of her company, "We're pioneers." David Corn can be reached at dacor@aol.com. David Corn is Washington editor of The Nation magazine (www.thenation.com). Copyright 1996 The Washington Post Company