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Blogs and Chat Rooms Pose Risks Despite Coveted Demographics
August 11, 2005 By Kris Oser
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Innovation has its dark side.
That’s what advertisers are realizing about

Sought-after young people flock to chat rooms, but advertisers are wary of out-of-control content.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Innovation has its dark side.
That’s what advertisers are realizing about advertising on consumer-controlled spaces such as blogs and chat rooms. Recently, Yahoo was sued by the parents of a boy who charged his picture was posted on a site by a pedophile in a user-run Yahoo chat room, and State Farm, PepsiCo and Georgia-Pacific pulled their ads. The Los Angeles Times had to shut down a reader-generated comment “wikitorial” feature after child pornography and obscenity were posted.
Yahoo closed its user-generated chat rooms (although the Yahoo-sponsored rooms are still open), but the scandals have brought advertisers face-to-face with their fears.
Is it safe to advertise?
Is it safe to advertise in places on the Internet that are essentially run by consumers and cannot be controlled? How can they protect themselves and their good names when blog and chat-room users are liable to say and post anything? It’s not just pornography or off-color language that worries them. What if consumers got angry about something involving a marketer’s brand, and their remarks got linked to across the Internet? Maybe advertising in such open spaces is not worth the risk.
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