When the Titanic went down in 1912, paperboys across North America stood on street corners shouting "Extra! Extra!"
When tragedy strikes today, some media outlets deploy a more high-tech -- though somewhat controversial -- marketing tool: paid search advertising.
- Do you have an opinion? Answer the poll question at Globetechnology.com
Shortly after Cho Seung-Hui killed himself and 32 others at Virginia Tech, The New York Times, CNN and other media outlets bid for the search term "Virginia shooting" on search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
As a result, people searching for the latest news on the massacre were served up ads for the various news outlets alongside the natural search results.
As recently as yesterday, the underlined CNN link on Yahoo directed users to click to "get the latest breaking news on the shooting at Virginia Tech," while The New York Times boasted that "The New York Times has the latest news and updates."
The media outlets paid the various search engines as much as 20 cents (U.S.) for each user that followed the paid link to their news coverage.
Search engines make billions by selling sponsored search results that are displayed on top and to the right of regular search results.
Yesterday, Google reported that it made $1-billion during the first three months of the year, up 69 per cent from the year-earlier quarter, as it gained market share from its rivals.
Depending who you ask, buying sponsored links around tragedy is either good business, or the worst kind of vulture marketing by media outlets.
"It's absolutely a very smart tactic for them, and I would be surprised not to see more of it happening," said Nick Barbuto, who advises marketers on Internet media plans at Cossette Communication Group Inc. "For consumers who are looking for news on certain events, it makes sense for certain outlets to try to get their news coverage to the forefront."
The New York Times refused an interview request about its practice of buying search terms related to news events.
But in an e-mailed statement, Diane McNulty, the paper's executive director of community affairs and media relations, said the Times buys thousands of key words related to important news events and topics "on a regular basis."
"In this way we can demonstrate to people who do not regularly come to NYTimes.com, the breadth and depth of our coverage," she said.
The costs of using paid search advertising can vary a great deal, because prices are negotiated largely through an online bidding system. Advertisers who pay the most get top billing, as long as their link is most relevant to the term searched.
Yesterday, it would have cost an advertiser 20 cents (U.S.) a click to be one of the top paid links related to the term "Virginia Shooting," according to an online estimate at the Google AdWords program. Top billing for "Virginia Tech Shooting" could be had for 5 cents a click, while "Virginia gun law" was going for 48 cents.
There was much debate online yesterday over the ethics of buying and selling search terms related to tragedy. One blogger, at mediaviper.com, called for a boycott of the media outlets that bought terms related to the shooting.
But Neil Sanderson, a Toronto-based blogger who has spent 30 years in the news media in Canada, Fiji and New Zealand, said the media outlets actually provided a valuable service because they were advertising their news coverage before links related to Monday's shooting showed up in the organic (non-paid) results.
In Canada, both The Globe and Mail and the CBC have used paid search advertising to drive traffic to their websites. But in both cases, the search terms were acquired around themes -- such as automotive -- rather than specific events.
