Wikia and "GamePro" Advertising Deal
As something of a follow-up to my last post on Wikia and digital-sharecropping, I've run across this article: GamePro Strikes Ad, Content Deal With Wikia
by Mark Walsh, Monday, Jul 28, 2008 7:00 AM ET
GamePro Media will exclusively handle ad sales for the gaming section of Wikia, the for-profit Web hosting service started by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, under a new marketing partnership announced today.
GamePro will serve display ads across the approximately 500,000 pages of game-related content on Wikia covering a wide range of enthusiast topics from the complex fantasy game "World of Warcraft" to Club Penguin. Wikia's game-related inventory accounts for more than 300 million ad impressions a month.
This connects interestingly with Wikia's recent lust for advertising space. Moreover:
With the upcoming relaunch of GamePro.com on Aug. 12, the company also plans to feature Wikia Gaming content on the revamped home page. ...
At the same time, GamePro will also allow Wikia authors to grab content from the site including game screenshots, expert reviews and video available to use within their own wikis, Huseby said
Let's see if I've got this straight. You work for free, and a for-profit magazine might use your material without paying you. In return, they'll let you use their promotional material for what the magazine sells, i.e. be an unpaid marketer. But remember, folks, it's all about the "community"!
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in wikipedia | on August 03, 2008 01:16 AM (Infothought permalink)
Advertising corrupts Wikipedia (the name/host - not the work), and lessens its value compared to an equivalent without advertising.
This is asset stripping the goodwill of Wikipedia. It does not extract labour from the public.
The public simply forks Wikipedia and creates a version without advertising. Wikipedia continues, but steadily loses audience to AdFreepedia.
AdFreepedia remains the public work that the public laboured to produce.
And so on, until a home can be found that isn't going to only host in exchange for the ability to asset strip the goodwill it builds up.
As a heavy contributor to the Transformers wiki, I'd just like to say thank you for the article. The Google point IS well-taken, and has been discussed (and we had actually thought of this before)... but ultimately, our plans are not changing... and THIS kind of thing is exactly the reason why, the kind of thing we've been dreading.
Back when Wikia first started to blindside and backpedal over their ads and placement and various changes, I and many others lost any reason to trust them, as it seemed clear they would capitulate to advertizers almost immediately. Wikia's "well, logged-in viewers won't get ads!" was a limp "there there" to try and placate the angry community with a short-term non-solution that appeals primarily to their sense of solipsism... which sadly seems to have worked. It doesn't matter if the pages are ruined and ad-riddled for 95% of the other people! Personally, I don't expect the ad-free-logins to last long, myself. And now, with this deal with GamePro... hopefully it will lead to some eyes being opened.
We're willing to stick it out there, and take our chances. We don't expect an easy time of it at first. We're making sure we've got as many ducks in a row as possible before the final move. Yeah, there exists the possibility it may fail. But better that than the near-certainty of an increasingly ad-bloated, content-kiped, steamroller-changes continuance at Wikia.
Seth, would you see any problem with running ads on Wikipedia and using the revenue to improve the site? D.
Crosbie: It's more complicated than that, due to the Google effects I mention in my column
Greg: You're welcome. I'm glad to help out.
Delia: Nobody knows if that would alienate enough people so as to be a loser overall, and the top people don't want to risk it.
Also, if Wikipedia had a lot of revenue it would generate a class of people to fight over it.
Seth: I, personally, wouldn't mind it if it was verified that the money was used to improve the site, be it Wikipedia or any other site.
Wes: as long as it stays non-profit there wouldn't be what to fight for even if revenues are high (they would have to be used to improve the sie and such -- nobody could legally pocket them). D.
Delia
Wes: Yes - money changes everything
Delia: But do you do a lot of free work for Wikipedia? Note there's ways of extracting money from a non-profit (like expensive dinners to meet with "potential funders" - or that's what one puts on the expense account :-) ).
that's why I said if it were *verified* that the money was spent for that purpose -- you'd have to give the contributors easy access to that sort of information. D.