Talk:Adland

I disagree with user:Grayfell's removal of the following text from the Adland article's Reviews section:

In July 2011 Brand Republic listed Adland as the worlds 6th most influential advertising blog,^[1]

The reason given, "Brand Republic's opinion is too flimsy to both including without independent sources", does not make sense to me. Brand Republic's opinion is an opinion, cited in a section for reviews of Adland (which goes to establishing notability for the site). Even if Brand Republic is not a Reliable Source (which Grayfell does not seem to be arguing), it would still be reliable as to its own editorial opinion. Asking for secondary sources seems excessive, but I'm not clear that's what he was meant, either. Brand Republic is an fairly major online trade magazine in the field of European advertising & marketing, especially in the UK. It is operated by Haymarket Media Group which publishes dozens of magazines, both print and online.

I am restoring Brand Republic sentence, and would request if anyone believes that if I am wrong in my reasoning above, that we discuss it here on the talk page. Carl Henderson (talk) 04:01, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

A subjective appraisal like this needs to be weighed more carefully than a statement of fact. Brand Republic is a redirect to Haymarket Media Group, which says virtually nothing about Brand Republic, its editorial process, it's circulation, etc.. This means that readers are not given any way to assess the merit of this claim. The linked article gives absolutely no context, ranking sites by "Brandwatch value" without explaining what that means. This essentially promotes both Adland, and Brand Republic by proxy, without providing any meaningful information. Since this is not a concrete, easily understood claim, (like, for example, the Inc. 500) then it should not be included without context provided by independent sources.

That is reason enough to remove it, but looking at the site, I also don't see a strong indication that this is a WP:RS with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. I could be wrong about that, of course. Belonging to a prolific publisher is irrelevant. Opinions and reviews must still be attributed to expert opinions, and using a non-RS site without additional commentary would be very unusual here. Grayfell (talk) 05:02, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

It appears that we were both incorrect in assuming that the Brand Republic list was based on a subjective appraisal. Brandwatch is an independent social media monitoring company who's proprietary tools specifically monitor (among other things) blogs and news sites. Brandwatch is not connected with Haymarket Media Group, but supplies information to corporate and media clients.

As for whether Brand Republic as a magazine is a Reliable Source, I would like to point out the following in its favor: Brand Republic employs a site editorial team, draws on content from Haymarket's established Campaign, Marketing, and Media Week magazines, subscribes to—and is regulated under—the UK Independent Press Standards Organisation's Code of Practice, and has a documented procedure for handling editorial complaints.

I would suggest the following revision of the sentence for clarity and context:

In July 2011, Brand Republic listed Adland as the 6th most influential blog in the category of "advertising, marketing, media, PR, and digital blogs" (ranked by Brandwatch score).^[2]

How does that sound? Carl Henderson (talk) 06:37, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Okay, that does change things, doesn't it? At a glance, I'm still not clear why we are giving this ranking so much coverage, but clearly, I need to look a little closer at this first. Since the Brand Republic article listing still completely lacks any context, it becomes a game of three-card-monte for the reader to try to figure what is being said by whom, and why. The Brand Republic article is so minimal and is just repeating Brandwatch, so the questions are now whether Brandwatch itself is reliable, and if it is noteworthy. So is it well-regarded, or is it like Klout? I clearly don't know, so I'm going to poke around and respond further in a little while. Hold on a bit before adding that, please.

As for Haymarket, I remain skeptical, but the details are not important right now other than that "Reputation" implies an outside opinion. I will poke around some more for that, too, if Brandwatch is borderline. Grayfell (talk) 07:08, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I just passed through the Brandwatch article and at least cursorily reviewed all the sources. There was a lack of substantial coverage of the actual numbers, while a great deal about the company's subscription business model and venture capital history. Judging by the article's history, it looks plausible to me that it was heavily edited by someone in the company (or maybe paid editing) and then later cleaned up, so more critical coverage, if it exists, isn't included. That's still not a great sign, though. Looking at those sources, I don't feel that a Brandwatch score is useful as a measure of success or significance.

It's likely that Brand Republic had access to a subscription to Brandwatch which they used that to write the article. This explains the lack of context or explanation, and also why the article invites suggestions for other blogs, since it's trivially easy for them to check and see if they're worth including in the rankings. If this is the case, it was a very quick article, with very loose inclusion criteria, and I don't really think it's informative or neutral to include it in the Wikipedia article. Is it really telling the reader anything useful? The Brandwatch article doesn't actually explain what a "Brandwatch score" is any more than the Brand Republic source, so it sounds impressive but is basically meaningless, and leaves the reader at a dead-end if they want more info about the ranking. Grayfell (talk) 08:18, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I also disagree with user:Grayfell's removal of the following text from the Adland article's Reviews section:

In September 2015, Business.com listed Adland as one of their "Top 10 Advertising Blogs You Must Follow Now".^[1]

The reason given was, "the Business.com bit is clickbait, not journalism. This is just a puff-piece, and is only presented as the blogger's personal opinion, not a representation of the entire site". I checked the Reliable Sources Noticeboard and found nothing about [Business.com] one way or another. It does not seem to be clickbait to me, but I recognize that that is a matter of opinion. As for a "the blogger's personal opinion", again—this is a review, and as such is going to be personal opinion. If the objection is that writer is a blogger, and thus not a reliable source, WP:NEWSBLOG states that "These may be acceptable sources if the writers are professionals, but use them with caution because the blog may not be subject to the news organization's normal fact-checking process."

Grayfell's point is not without merit; I am not restoring this sentence, but instead, I'm going to submit Business.com (and the specific reference) to WP:RSN and see what the consensus there is. Carl Henderson (talk) 04:03, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Some of these concerns are addressed above, but for obvious reasons this should probably be confined to one place if possible, rather than spread it out over multiple pages. I will respond at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Business.com_Writers.2FBloggers_as_a_Reliable_Source_for_.22Best_of.22_Lists for convenience. Grayfell (talk) 05:09, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I (once again) removed the source for Sydsvenskan, in this link nothing is mentioned about starting to charge for access after the change from "badland" to Adland. I've removed this and other sources that have been added earlier by several different accounts that are very limited in what they edit (mostly this article). I don't have time at the moment to go over the rest of the sources to verify that they actually are stating what people add to this article but Wäppling, the man she lives with, her hosting company and people she knows can count on me to continue to monitor this article so I'll get back to it in time. GameOn (talk) 08:59, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I am reading the article in question via Google Translate, so perhaps the timeline appears confused to me. It looked to me that the article stated that the move to a subscription model took place after the transition from Badland to Adland. From the translation:

"The year 2000 was upgraded Ådland to become a blog. For the or Me is defined purely technical. I installed the kind of publishing that blogs are using and why I call it a blog. However, et a blog is different from others. On Ådland get two euros a month access to the Internet's largest archive of commercials."

In any event, the Sydsvenskan article is a valid source for the passage stating that Adland once charged for access, and says so clearly, so that needs to go back in. Let's try the following sentence:

In 2000, Badland was rebranded as Adland. Initially using subscription model for access to its commercial archive, ^[1] later moving to an ad-supported revenue model,^[2] and most recently to a donation supported site.^[3]

I don't think you were referring to me when you mentioned, "several different accounts that are very limited in what they edit (mostly this article)", as a cursory look at my Wikipedia contributions will show that I edit all sorts of random stuff. I first came across the Adland article indirectly via Twitter. Someone forwarded into my timeline a complaint by Ms. Wappling that she had been unable to get a link to some of her personal information removed from the talk page here at AdLand. I advised her to take the issue to the BLP Noticeboard, as that was the best way to get such information quickly removed.

After talking to her on Twitter, I decided to take a look at the article, and thought it could use some significant work. I've done a pretty substantial (nearly ground up) rewrite and reorganization over the past few weeks, adding content, rewriting content, adding numerous sources, expanding references for existing sources, providing citations for information that had been previously unreferenced—as well as adding some stuff that later turned out to not be of Wikipedia quality (thanks to [user:Grayfell] for help there; his reverts helped me make this a stronger article). I think the current article pretty good. If you see anything I've missed as far as references not supporting the adjacent content, by all means, please fix them or let me know, and I will fix them. I think I have caught most of that.

As for "Wäppling, the man she lives with, her hosting company and people she knows", I really can't comment. My communications to her are limited to several exchanges on Twitter. I think the article is pretty solid and NPOV. If you believe that there are remains of some previous COI edits still present, they should be fixed. If see a pattern of COI editing in the future, I hope you will take it to the COI Noticeboard. (Though keep in mind that many single purpose accounts are not COI accounts.) I will also be monitoring this article for issues and will do the same.

Just a note: I am planning to ask Ms. Wappling (via Twitter) to upload a publicity photo of herself that she owns the rights for to Commons, under the appropriate CC license, to use as illustration here. Carl Henderson (talk) 21:13, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the critiques of the citations, sources, and language in your latest round of revisions. Based on your input, I've gone back and fixed any errors I've introduced (such as the cut-n-paste error on a URL, leading to a nonsensical reference), placed references more carefully next to the exact passage they support, delinked several compound sentences that you pointed out, and made minor grammer and typo fixes.

Please note that I restored the "mailing list" to the history section, as the source says specifically, "I wanted to discuss advertising, I was in usenet groups doing it, I created a mailing list for this purpose." I also restored sentence citing "Business Insider". The talk page discussion you referenced along with your deletion concerned a different article in a similarly-named publication (Business.com vs Business Insider). The Business.com source remains removed. To the best of my knowledge, the Business Insider source has never been the subject of any talk page discussion, and seems to be reasonably solid for a review (i.e., third party opinion). Carl Henderson (talk) 00:45, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Since the question has come up, I'll go through most of the editors of this article

• Frr5 (talk · contribs), created the article, only other edit is to support a keep of it several years afterwards
• Aaskw (talk · contribs), is according to the account Åsk Wäppling, clear COI
• SirShill (talk · contribs), without breaking WP:OUTING I can't give the specifics but clear COI
• 84.55.67.145 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), without breaking WP:OUTING I can't give the specifics but clear COI
• 24.147.187.70 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), only interested in this article
• 67.23.5.105 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), also only interested in this article. IP belongs to the hostingcompany that Adland uses
• Missadvert (talk · contribs), almost exclusively interested in this article
• Caymangreen (talk · contribs), only interested in this article. Adds content that has been correctly removed earlier
• 83.250.165.73 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), only interested in this article
• 213.89.166.37 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), per above
• Tromlov (talk · contribs), only one edit and that to remove an orphan-tag
• 72.67.166.43 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), only interested in this article. Readds information that has correctly been removed earlier
• 204.17.229.250 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), most interest is in this article, adds content that doesn't match the source (once again)
• 198.72.206.187 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS) per above
• CopyPastaBill (talk · contribs), only interested in this article
• 23.240.191.204 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), per above
• 2605:e000:84d9:200:48bf:c2d2:338c:4915 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), 2605:e000:84d9:200:7421:e546:7786:9b1 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), 2602:306:39c5:cf60:2983:6e6:8c5f:c706 (talk · contribs · IP contribs · WHOIS), most likely the same user since the IPv6 adress are similar

If we then take a look at the article on dawp we find:

• Slush, a user that creates the article
• SlushSlush, a user that creates the account after the article has been removed from svwp

Since I'm not that active anymore on any language version I've resigned as an admin on svwp (and to be clear I was not an admin at the time Adland was removed) and can't thus easily see the edit history there. If someone wants that information I can of course request it. But I think the point is clear. GameOn (talk) 08:03, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Okay, given that perspective, I can understand why you have might have questioned my recent wave of edits to this article. I don't mind having my edits questioned; I can be wrong as much as the next guy, and usually a better article results from the back-and-forth. Carl Henderson (talk) 09:38, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

How should we handle this article where Åsk Wäppling describes being harassed by Wikipedia editors who work on this article? How should it be acknowledged? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

User:Liz, I helped Åsk Wäppling (over Twitter) with the issue of her personal information being exposed. I advised her to take the topic to the BLP Noticeboard. It was after that, I took a look at the article (Adland 30 October 2015 Version, and decided it was a bit of a mess and began working to improve it. After she noticed that the personal information had been restored, I suggested she do a new posting on BLP Noticeboard, provided some advice, and suggested that she specifically request an admin look into the issue (and if that failed, to escalate to ANI). She also provided a photo she had the rights to on my request to Commons for use in the article. I now follow her twitter feed, and she follows mine.

I don't think that makes me Biased on the article, and it certainly doesn't rise to the level of a Conflict of Interest (even by my rather expansive definition of such). However, I feel that if the question of her personal information having been linked to by Wikipedia is going to continue to be an issue I should repeat this disclosure of my communications with her. (I'd previously talked about this in my 7 January 2016 reply to GameOn.)

In the interests of transparency, I believe that any time Wikipedia becomes part of an event/biography/etc. that it should be mentioned as part of the corresponding Wikipedia article. However, in the case of the article you linked to, it is a Breitbart.com article, and Wikipedia's RSN consensus appears not to consider Breitbart.com to be a reliable source. As such, perhaps this information should only be added to this article if it is picked up on by other media sources. That is how a similar issue was handled on The Hunting Ground article which I also worked on, and was involved in talk page discussions about.

Ultimately though, I will leave it up to you. After all, you are an admin, and this is the kind of thing you get paid the zero bucks for! Carl Henderson (talk) 20:24, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

On the contrary, Carl, I'm happy with the care you have taken rehabbing this article. Breitbart isn't normally considered a reliable source, I just wanted to highlight the problems the subject had with her personal information with the editors working on this article. It turns out that you are well aware of the situation, more so than myself. Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:48, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand how it's of any importance to readers of any article to see every mention where a combination of the subject and wikipedia are mentioned. Additionally mentioning it again will make it easier for people to find this information, and as such the statements of Wäppling at breitbart (which also contains a few misstakes) also makes it easier to find said information here. And to be clear this is not to try and "defend" myself since I don't see any need to do that. Regardless of what Wäppling feels about me, and me about her, I am aware of the Streisand effect and don't want her any harm. GameOn (talk) 06:08, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Since it appears that most of the issues are in the past, there's not much to be done in response to the breitbart post. The main source of contention is the link that contains allegedly personal information, so we should make sure we keep this link out of the article or the talk page and not restore it in any fashion. Gamaliel (talk) 14:57, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

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Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Adland. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

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I'd like to revisit the CoI issue above or maybe just call into question one particular edit I noticed because it sounded weird in context and I'm unsure of the reliability of he source. Edit in question qualifies Adland as "the world's largest and oldest commercial archive" and cites reclaimthenet.org. Is this considered a reliable source? --178.5.241.194 (talk) 09:25, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

We can see on the website and in the Adage article Influential ad archive AdLand gets new lease on life through acquisition by Marketecture/ that the logo has a new look. Should the logo be changed here as well? And how? Frakkler (talk) 19:58, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Hello, I'm the owner of the AdLand trademark (CEO of parent company). I give you permission to use it in wikipedia in perpetuity. Download here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qf8x4aqpwres8rc2r1209/AdLand-Square.png?rlkey=jwnnckvxs6iyw087q4qvgci47&dl=0 Aripap (talk) 00:06, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! I have added the new logo to the page.

Please email permissions-commons@wikimedia.org within the next 30 days and let them know that this file is ok to use. Use the release generator here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Wikimedia_VRT_release_generator&withJS=MediaWiki:Relgen.js Frakkler (talk) 19:30, 27 June 2025 (UTC)