My issue is this: Early in my career PR and advertising were totally separate. If you worked with a reporter on a story, there was NEVER any implication that they’d write a story only if you advertised. Then trade magazines started to imply that if you advertised, they’d write a story. So, when I started my own business, I made it policy to tell reporters that we believed in church and state and wouldn’t make recommendations to our clients on advertising. That worked…and still works.

Paying for a story is tabloid journalism. It’s not ethical. I don’t care what it does to your revenue. It’s not right. Link bait is not ethical. I don’t care if it helps you make a quick buck.

In today’s age of transparency and authenticity, this kind of shoddy business will go down in flames.

Amy, Apple does not deserve more consideration at all. Apple has always done what they wanted to regardless of other businesses. People love to bash Microsoft, but Apple has done its own fair share.

Uh, this is the same company (Apple) that knowlingly screwed up Adobe’s Flash CS5 release. Why do they deserve more consideration than they gave another company?

Consider a few recent articles:

Why I like Guys with iPhones (gizmodo)
Pandora Partners with Facebook (200 words on mashable, and articles ends with a question)
Be Evil. Facebook’s New Like Button. (techcrunch)

Hard hitting journalism this is not.

I’d argue that your problem isn’t with their business decision, it’s with their business model. The business models for these sites isn’t about quality or depth. This is about a quantity of articles intended to drive site volume to maximize ad revenue. SEO strategies clearly determine content creation, and iPhone is link porn.

I have no problem with these sites business models. It’s what they decided to be. I don’t personally go to these sites for these very reasons, but they’re entitled to try to make a living however.

If your primary objective was to generate traffic, how would you have approached this situation? $5,000 bought 1,000,000 visitors. That’s 1/2 cent per visitor. Where else can you buy visitors that cheap?

I heard they had 10,000,000 page views. They’d need to sell ads at only a $.50 CPM to pay back the cost of buying the phone. I’m betting they made slightly more than that.

You mentioned not building base, but again I disagree. We’re talking about such a large group of visitors, only a small percentage needs to return to be economically smart. Considering the ad revenue they likely made, *any* repeat visitors would be free.

You may not like their content, but from a tactic perspective this was brilliant.

Actually, I do blame them. Just like Jon said in his comment, more viewers for a day doesn’t equate to ROI. So you bought a bunch new viewers. Does that mean they’re going to come back? Do you really want to be known as the tabloid of technology? Maybe I’m naive and idealistic, but I’d like to think we can drive new viewers with great content…without having to buy them.