The Restricted Advertising Blues

When Blythe, Rachel, Lynn and I took over AAR, we decided to take a fresh look at virtually everything at the site. One of those areas was advertising.

Since the inception of advertising at AAR, the site has offered authors only what was termed Restricted campaigns – in other words, ads for specific books weren’t permitted to appear on review pages. Unrestricted campaigns were reserved for everyone else, including publishers and other sellers of goods and services.

We thought about this issue a great deal. We need advertising revenue to keep the site going and Unrestricted campaigns, because they offer significantly more page views, bring in higher fees than Restricted ones – a definite consideration. But, honestly, beyond that, it just isn’t the editorial norm to separate review pages from book advertising.

The New York Times does it. The Washington Post does it. Virtually every review publication does it.  And now we are, too.

As of a few days ago, book ads began appearing on review pages. We trust and believe that every single one of our readers will understand that an ad is an ad and a review is a review. And, yes, since the ads are dynamically generated, there will be occasions when an Elizabeth Hoyt ad will appear on an Elizabeth Hoyt review. We think you’ll understand the difference.

Right now, every author who bought a Restricted campaign is now benefitting from Unrestricted access – and the higher number of page views that go along with that.  From this point on, however, Restricted campaigns are no longer available.

We remain dedicated to all the big things at AAR – including a renewed commitment to the honest and fair reviews for which we’ve always been known. But this is an important change here at the site.  And we just wanted to be upfront with our readers about it.

-Sandy AAR

 

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