What, the f***, is Forbes thinking. 

And, for that matter, what on earth is Research in Motion thinking for underwriting this nonsense.

So here I am surfing around the Web and I see:

“Five reasons you don’t want an iPhone.”

Naturally, I click and get one of Forbes’ lists.  Reason 1, whatever.  Reason 2, something else.  Nothing too shocking, or surprising… but then what ads do I see adjacent to this list?

That’s Blackberry’s ads.  That’s appalling.

But wait, there’s more:

Now someone might say this was an accident etc.  But it’s not, these are not just ads, there’s clearly a (roughly) 120×90 pixel-sized AT&T button under the horizontal navigation bar… so this is clearly something sponsored.

I’m a publisher now and I spent 7 years in ad sales so I know something is dubious when I see it.

Let me guess what happened:

1 - Blackberry saw the timing of the Apple’s iPhone release in end of June 2007 and decides to go on the offensive.

2 - RIM - parent of Blackberry - issues out request for proposals (RFPs).

3 - Forbes suggests banners, display ads, video ads, etc., and adjacent ads alongside this article.  I’m not saying that Blackberry paid for this content piece, since I have no proof of that… but it is very normal for advertisers to get publishers to write stories and advertisers indirectly underwrite these.   

In this case, I doubt Blackberry explicitly asked for this, this was probably an overzealous sales team at Forbes. 

But that 120×90 button shows that this is a sponsorship so Blackberry definitely was involved, but notice how it does not explicitly say that “this is sponsored by Blackberry” either?

I doubt anyone will care, but there ought to be a Chinese Wall of sorts. 

Write “Five Reasons Why You Need the Blackberry” and I might not really mind about this, but this is tacky, and unethical.  Just for that, I might not buy a Blackberry and buy an iPhone. 

What is surprising:

I expect this from three stooges running a lame T&A e-zine, not a venerable and otherwise classy publication like Forbes.

I’d expect to see this from print, who might be desperate to stop the flood of ads online…  I don’t think online ad sales teams need to resort to this, it’s just wrong! 

I guess while some media bend over backwards to canonize Steve Jobs and Apple, all it takes to do otherwise is a sponsorship campaign.

Any thoughts?  Related:

- What is Fake Steve was Real Steve?
- Should Apple / MSFT buy Record Labels?
- Apple CSR: Oh Man…

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