This week, I'm taking a break from the questions that readers have submitted through our submission form to address a question that I am frequently asked by e-mail. It has many variations, but they all boil down to this:
Why are there non-Catholic ads on the About.com GuideSite to Catholicism?
In particular, many readers have noted that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) advertises very frequently, to the point that some readers have even asked if there is a connection between Catholicism and Mormonism. (There isn't.) Why do such ads appear, and how should you regard any non-Catholic ads that you find on the Catholicism GuideSite?
About.com is an advertiser-supported network of guidesites. There are two types of ads that appear on About.com. Display ads (larger ads with text and pictures, such as the Mormon ads) are purchased at the network level; the appearance of any particular ad on any particular guidesite on About.com is not an endorsement of that ad.
In this specific case, the LDS Church purchases ad space on the entire religion channel on About.com. That means that visitors to every guidesite in the channel—including the About.com GuideSite to Agnosticism/Atheism—see those ads.
The situation is a little bit different with the second type of ad. Text ads (Google ads) appear at various spots on every page on the Catholicism GuideSite, usually labeled as "Sponsored Links" or "Catholicism Ads." "Sponsored Links" does not mean that the Catholicism GuideSite sponsors them; rather, it means that the links are ads placed by Google rather than selected by me.
Advertisers do not place Google ads directly on any website. Instead, they contract directly with Google. Google ads, which are found on virtually any website of any size on the World Wide Web, are contextual ads. Google analyzes the text on the particular web page and then inserts ads that seem to relate to that text.
So, for instance, on my page Can I Get Married in the Catholic Church?, you will often see ads in the "Sponsored Links" and "Catholicism Ads" sections such as "Catholic Singles Online," "Annulment Process," and "Save Your Marriage."
Again, the presence of these ads does not mean that I endorse them. In fact, the relationship runs the opposite way: The revenue raised from advertising keeps About.com in business, which ensures that the Catholicism GuideSite will continue to exist.
And that allows me to continue to write about Catholicism on About.com and to help thousands of people every day learn more about the Catholic Faith.
Readers sometimes ask if there is anything they can do to help ensure that the ads on the Catholicism GuideSite will be Catholic ones. Yes: Encourage Catholic organizations to advertise. The Google ads will always remain fairly random, but the display advertising spaces on the Catholicism GuideSite are for sale. If you know of any Catholic organizations that would be interested in advertising on the Catholicism GuideSite, the advertising offices of About.com would be very happy to hear from them.
You can find more information about how to advertise on About.com at Advertise.About.com.
If you have a question that you would like to be featured as part of our Reader Questions series, you can use our submission form. If you would like the question answered privately, please send me an e-mail. Be sure to put "QUESTION" in the subject line, and please note whether you'd like me to address it privately or on the Catholicism blog.
What a pleasant surprise to read this question, I too have often wondered about these advertisements. In fact, I’m so sick of seeing the Mormon advertisements that I feel like throwing up, however, that will never stop me from visiting About.com and reading all the information on Catholicism because I love my Catholic Faith.
The advertisements are not “contextual ads”; they are misplaced. The appearance of these ads in a Catholic site seem to indirectly, in a subtle way, proselytize catholic readers and divert their attention. But this may not be the intention of Google in advertising the non-Catholic ads in About.com. Probably non-Catholic advertisers are more in number and more passionate in propagating their faith than Catholic advertisers. If my proposition is wrong then let us enjoin our catholic advertisers to publish their ads in Catholic websites, not only in About.com but also in other Catholic sites.
Sophia, “contextual ad” is a technical term. It means, as I explained in the post, that Google analyzes the text and tries to serve up ads that relate to the text.
The problem, of course, is that such mechanical analysis is pretty rudimentary. Write an article about the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion, and you may find that Google serves up ads for abortion clinics. That doesn’t mean that Google intends to contradict Church teaching; rather, their algorithm for determining contextual ads is simply not very developed (even though Google’s algorithm is light years ahead of any of their competitors’). Google would, I’m sure, very much like to avoid serving up abortion-clinic ads on an anti-abortion article and instead serve up ads for crisis-pregnancy centers. After all, that makes it more likely that those who are reading an anti-abortion article will click on one of their ads.
You have to remember that Mormon “companies” are not the ones placing all these ads on the internet. The Mormon Church is paying for them all; and with their very deep pockets, they can buy huge amounts of advertising without being dependent on smaller, individual companies. I was a Mormon for 40 years before joining the Cathloic Church, so I know how they operate.
Thanks, Beverly, for your comment. Yes, as I wrote in the article, “In this specific case, the LDS Church purchases ad space on the entire religion channel on About.com.” Mormon companies aren’t purchasing the ads; however, if Catholic companies purchased ads, there would be fewer ad spots for the LDS Church to purchase.