Dear Website Poster/Commenter…

What I’m about to tell you will change the way you freely give your comments and opinions on websites. I know many of you like the idea of seeing your opinions plastered all over the web or you just simply like to anonymously say what is on you mind. But, for what ever the reason you do it, you may want to seriously consider putting an end to it. Either that, or find another avenue such as Twitter or Facebook.

My Background

For the last number of years I have been posting comments on various politically charged news websites. Originally started on CNN’s iReports, then left there and just occasionally and randomly would post on other sites and it was more driven by the topic. I did start my own blogs and sort of found a secondary home where I would post my comments on Huffington Post.

Fixated Focus

On HuffPo I would frequently see comments by people questioning why they were so “Fixated” on Sarah Palin, for example. A couple of times I would sort of give the reasons based on what I had discovered on CNN, and confirmed the same on HuffPo. When ever I did, the HuffPo moderators would remove my response. The reasons why they did was to protect them from a mass exodus once people realized it. Over the past year the moderation on Huffington Post has become worse and worse and I’ve found it troubling. My suspicion is that it is tied to these other issues. Additionally there seems to be a sudden spurt of more “Right Biased” posters and the odd thing is many of these “Posters” have large amounts of “Friends.”  Considering I’ve been on Huffington Post for nearly 2 years and these New Right Biased posters have more followers than I on a Left Biased site seems odd. My suspicion is they are HuffPo plants meant to stir the pot, and that is another issue, but it is tied in some ways to this issue.

Why Does Huffington Post Get Fixated?

So just why does Huffington Post and other sites get seemingly “fixated” on certain people or topics of the day/week/month? The one word answer… MONEY! How do you think Adrianna Huffington made her millions? Commenter people like You and I. Of course pure page views contribute, but comments drive it.

By the way, it is NOT a Fixation on polarizing people like Sarah Palin, and now Donald Trump. It is a Financial Motivation, pure and simple, and this is exactly why they don’t want you to know and why they always removed my comments on the site when I eluded to this topic.

The Financial Marketing Machine

So how does Huffington Post and the other sites generate this money? Well the obvious part is right in front of you in the form of web advertisements on all their pages. But what you do not see are the mechanisms that are at the lower level of these pages. You can easily see it, well unless they decide to hide it from you after the posting of this article, by simply right clicking on any page and by choosing “View Source” from the menu.  Then you will get a new window that shows you all the web page code running that specific page. Then you just need to scroll down to almost the bottom of the code and you will see it. For example on CNN a few years back they were using Neilson and I believe they still do.

I have decided to capture a couple of screen shots in the event Huffington Post decides to lock everything down. Even if they do, that doesn’t mean they have stopped using these tools.

The screen capture above is from the web page HTML source from one of Huffington Post’s web site. This particular piece shows one of the marketing tools Buzz Feed. I believe at the time of this writing that they have 3 different entities for their statistical collection. The one I will focus on can be seen in the screen shot below and it’s called “Pubmatic.”

The Undeniable Revelation

Again as I said, my focus will be only on the PubMatic tools, but you can be certain the same depth of scope exists with the other tools found on these sites. Clicking on PubMatic’s logo to the left will provide you with their RTB (Real Time Bidding) White Paper. I’ve extracted some of those key images and components into this posting but the White Paper will give you an in depth view of what is transpiring.  It is important to note that the term “Publisher” would be a site like CNN or Huffington Post.

What I’m exposing here will be not only an eye opener, but an introduction into terminology and companies that you probably have never heard of before. First here are some terms that may very well be new to you and they are used throughout these hidden technologies.

• CPM (Cost Per Mille or Cost Per Thousand)
• RTB (Real-Time Bidding)
• PFP (Pay For Performance) Advertising
• PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising
• PPI (Pay Per Impression) Advertising

The PubMatic Points and Partners

As mentioned before it’s rather doubtful that any of you reading this have heard of this organization.  Even for my long time and involvement with the web it was new to me as well as the rest of these companies that will be mentioned. When I saw the repeated complaints of Huffington Post’s “Obsession” with someone like Palin, I decided to look into who was the marketing engine was  for Huffington Post as I knew it was Nielson for CNN. When I saw PubMatic, I decided to explore them further and it did not take long to realize the extent and depth of what these companies do with all this web data.

Publishers can’t afford to stay on the sidelines and let somebody else figure it out and take home the growing tide of RTB advertising dollars

Rajeev Goel – CEO PubMatic

Here is the Home Page Header Graphic on the PubMatic web site and you will find an unbelievable amount of information then what I’ve provided here.

One can tell how successful this organization is by scrolling to the bottom of the home page and clicking on the “Career Opportunities” link to see the large number of jobs looking to be filled.

Some PubMatic Summary Concepts

Again it is important to note that what I’m providing here is just a drop compared to what you can find and uncover on the PubMatic Web Site. This information will make it very clear that these sites are clear money making organizations, especially through Real Time Bidding that is PubMatic’s Bread and Butter. In this first image from the White Paper you can see the increase in advertising revenue for the Publisher.

Next we can see the complex diagram explaining the entire process and showing all the possible paths between the Publisher and the Agency Advertiser.

Finally we can see the conceptual flow from the Web Page Request get sent through the PubMatic Request Engine and how the Real Time Bidding for Advertising Space commences.

We can clearly see the complexities happening behind the pages of our favorite sites and again it leads to the question. Do You REALLY want to continue feeding the cash register at these big news sites?

The Other Pieces of the PubMatic Puzzle

There are other pieces of the PubMatic Symphony of events that take place when this Advertising Engine is started and as one site stated they “Work like a Well Oiled Machine because the people they have working for them are very, very smart people.” There is no doubt in my mind about this, especially how well all of this is concealed from the web site visitors.

These ancillary companies are part of the complete solution for Advertising Management on these web sites. Again, my guess is, the names of these companies are very new to most the people reading this blog. Each Company Name ahead of their web site image is a link to the corresponding company’s website if you wanted to explore them further. Each Image link just provides a larger version of the image for general reading

Razorfish

Trigget

Lucid Media

AdBrite

Summary

I’m certain that once this information is released there could be fall out in a number of ways from locking down their web sites to threatening me to remove the information. Why? Because this could ultimately hurt their bottom line. But my feeling is, If you are making so much money on advertising space that is driven by the people willing to donate their time and energy to make it all explode, then perhaps they need to reward those people who comment.

Oh and for all you little Rightie Posters who feel that this is some sort of Liberal conspiracy, think again, as the image above was taken from a RWNJ site Newsmax and we can clearly see that they use Nielson for their advertising ratings.  Mind you Newsmax isn’t anywhere near the sophistication of Huffington Post and it would actually be like comparing a High School Football team to an NFL team due to how antiquated Newsmax is.

Bottom Line is… They ALL Do it!

CNN, Huffington Post, Newsmax, Pubmatic, Razorfish, Trigget, Lucid Media, and AdBrite are registered tradmarks of their respective companies. All rights reserved.