The Economist describes the rise of content farms:
Clever software works out what internet users are interested in and how much advertising revenue a given topic can pull in. The results are sent to an army of 7,000 freelancers, each of whom must have a college degree, writing experience and a speciality. They artfully pen articles or produce video clips to fit headlines such as “How do I paint ceramic mugs?” and “Why am I so tired in winter?”
Although an article may pay as little as $5, writers make on average $20-25 an hour, says Mr Kydd. The articles are copy-edited and checked for plagiarism. For the most part, they are published on the firm’s 72 websites, including eHow, answerbag and travels.com. But videos are also uploaded onto YouTube, where the firm is by far the biggest contributor. Some articles end up on the websites of more conventional media, including USAToday, which runs travel tips produced by Demand Media. In March, Demand Media churned out 150,000 pieces of content in this way. The company is expected to go public later this year, if it is not acquired by a big web portal, such as Yahoo!, first.
The problem with content farms, ASU journalism professor Dan Gillmor says, is that they swamp the internet with mediocre content.
The upside is that “the firm is at least interested in what people want to know — which is nothing to sneer at.”
Content farms probably aren’t the way to go about it, but advertising does need to move much more toward connection with specific relevant content so as not to be wasted on people who don’t care about the product or service. The automated ad engines being used for blogs and various websites, as well as for general search, don’t work very well. One blogger I know had a feature called the “daily dysfunction.” Some ad engine promptly decided that it would be a good idea to run Viagra ads on her site.