Today, you will see sponsored content posted on the front page of Daily Kos. Al Jazeera America is launching an advertising campaign today and they've purchased ads on Daily Kos and I assume many other websites. The look and feel of digital advertising has evolved very little since the beginning of web advertising and it's still very much following the tried and true methods built in print media, but now with exceptional targeting. That means sponsored content and special sections created almost entirely to sell advertising are a part of the mix. No, there won't be a Daily Kos ski or auto supplement coming anytime soon. However, we are running a sponsored post on the front page featuring an Al Jazeera promo video plus doing shout outs to Al Jazeera America on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. You will also see an ad in our Elections Digest email (click here to sign up for that list now.)
Daily Kos has experimented with sponsored content in the past, but not in the last couple of years. We gave it another shot here and we'll run it again in mid-September. We may also offer this for another client in the future, but there are no plans at this time. We're not adequately equipped to offer this to clients in an optimal way. So it's not something normally included in our offerings.
For these sponsored posts, we're disabling comments, adding "Sponsored Content" in the headline, and there will be a background shading to visually differentiate it from our staff-written posts. I'll look into why the shading didn't happen. I thought it was when I wrote this up.
I scheduled this diary to go up at the same time as the sponsored post, which will be about 5 AM PT. I won't be around right away to answer questions, but go ahead and leave them in the comments and I'll be sure to respond as soon as I can. You can always contact me through the contact form if you prefer.