Andrew Watson

BBC sells it soul and starts profiting from visitors

Posted on 03. Jul, 2008 by Andrew Watson in PPC

The UK version of the BBC website is supposed to be funded by the British taxpayer… but increasingly they seem to be looking for ways of monetising that content – and some of those ways are very underhand.

I don’t have an issue with the BBC monetising content… what I have an issue about is that as a taxpayer I want the BBC to be open and honest about what they are doing with content. The link I found today is clearly a monetised link – so how impartial is it? and are the BBC now going to flood links in to their content in this fashion?

The link that I am refering to is on this page (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7486743.stm) and under related links is a link to Carphone Warehouse. This link does not simply link to Carphone Warehouse but to… and get ready for it…

http://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=L&ai=Bh_Ma-h1sSMqdAouc7AWjtunqApKx_FS4wav8A6rxx_QCoJwBCAAQARgBOABQ
sPD45P______AWC7vq6D0ArIAQGpAurcj8BItMA-yAKkmfYD2QPjCv9tlMeGOw&ggladgrp=17806590353481536835&gglcreat
=15241057765138878453&sig=AGiWqtzGI1EyirxNwD3p7MhmhugZOsBRQ
A&q=http://tsw0.com/302/22

The link is so long I had to break it to fit the post… but here it is in
its full BBC profiting glory ?

Clearly from Google… but it isn’t a standard link to a Google search page… and the aclk to me says advert click, which would seem to me that this link is actually from Google adsense? Click on the link and you get the following URL returned
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/commerce/servlet/gben-Home?TAG=1&ppcclick=yes

What is that at the end… ah yes ppcclick=yes… Auntie – taxpayers money or selling your soul?