世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com recently published the results of an opinion poll conducted by goo Research towards the end of November into sponsored blogging. 1,093 people from their internet monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based poll. 57.0% of the sample was female, 2.1% in their teens, 20.4% in their twenties, 42.4% in their thirties, 24.9% in their forties, and 10.2% in their fifties.

This practice is often disparagingly called “astroturfing”, meaning faking grass roots support. When it is disguised support, I hate it too, but when made clear I don’t really mind it; to illustrate using my current AdWords advertisers, the subtle and distrusted astroturfing would be something like:

By the way, recently I’ve been dabbling in hedge funds, and found the info at HedgeSynergy invaluable…

The obvious format, which Japundit do really well (now, did they pay me to say that?), is:

You may wish to visit my sponsor at Hayden-Harnett, which seems to be selling rather nice accessories and the like.

My personal least favourite is the habit of using (disclosure: I have a relationship with the company) which to me always reads as (disclosure: they pay me to say this).

There’s also a company PayPerPost which, as the name perhaps suggests, pays you to post about a product or service; actually, they are more of an introduction service, introducing advertisers with advertisees. I’ve not used them though, and I don’t think that sort of blogging would fit in well with this web site.

Q1: When interested in, or when planning to purchase or use, a product or service, do you refer to word-of-mouth (keyboard?) information from internet users? (Sample size=1,093)

Yes	74.7%
No	25.3%

When asked what sort of sites they refered to for this information, the top source for 549 of the 817 above, or 67.2%, was comparison sites like 価格.com, kakaku.com. Next was blogs, with 358 people, or 43.8%, using them as a source. Bulletin boards were accessed by 297 people, or 36.4%; personal home pages by 230 people or 28.2%; and SNS, Social Network Services by 144 people or 17.6%.

Of the 358 people who refered to blogs, 38.0%, or 136 people, used blogs specifically for their word-of-mouth information.

Q2: If you found out that a blogger had been paid to write about a specific product or service, how would you feel? (Sample size=1,093)

Feel that the sponsor is untrustworthy	20.9%
Feel that the blog is untrustworthy	28.0%
If the information is relevant and it’s made clear that this is sponsored content, then no particular problem	50.0%
Other	1.1%

Q3: If approached by a sponsor, would you want to introduce on your own blog a product or service? (Sample size=423, active bloggers)

If I can freely write whatever I want	61.7%
Even if I can’t freely write the copy	7.6%
Don’t want to at all	30.7%