Nothing like a wonderful little media war to get the week rolling.
News Corp and Fairfax are currently in a heated spat over a story published by The Australian‘s media editor Darren Davidson – who you may recall from an entire article he once unironically wrote about the Daily Mail‘s editor stealing his iPad and pouring beer on him. Davidson alleged in his story that advertisements for Fairfax real estate behemoth Domain were appearing on porn sites and torrent trackers like The Pirate Bay.
The implication of the headline and the lede of the article was that Fairfax was purchasing these ads. Of course, anyone who is involved in internet ads knows that these things are mediated through ad tech, and Fairfax most likely was not deliberately buying adspace on PornHub. Davidson acknowledged that in his yarn:
There is no suggestion that Fairfax, led by chief executive Greg Hywood, and Domain knowingly funded these sites. It is likely the ads were delivered to the sites by intermediaries including ad networks and ad exchanges.
So then the story became something remarkably less salacious – about whether Domain customers “should [demand] retrospective compensation in light of higher ad rates”. Which is, by any metric, a far less juicy story than Fairfax putting their ads on porno sites “[featuring] young Asian women in various stages of undress being subjected to masochistic acts alongside aggressive, violent language to describe females.”
Fairfax sent out a press release in turn denying that Domain ads had appeared on any porn site to begin with:
The Australian’s Darren Davidson had a story published this morning suggesting Domain has advertising on porn websites. We don’t.The screenshots Mr Davidson provided to us late yesterday appear to be links from a porn site to Commercial Real Estate, our commercial site.We did not authorise any advertising, re-targeting or redirections and believe it is a malicious scam/bot.Our review this morning, and our technical partners have confirmed, that no advertising from us has been placed on porn or illegal sites.This obviously damages not just us but all legitimate media businesses.
Then it got a little spicier:
News Limited has never had any shame about using their media platforms for attacks on competitors. They dress up their bile as news and bore the rest of the industry with their seemingly endless appetite for gutter dwelling.
Yowza! Criminy! Whatta scoop!
Every media feud is extremely stupid. This one is no better.
Source: The Australian.
