SingTel Clarifies Why Their InSing.com Advertisement Appeared on Prawn Site

August 23, 2009

By Wayang Times

singtel insing advertises

The initial story was carried by Straits Times:

An advertisement promoting a SingTel website on a prawn site has driven online users into a tizzy.

On Thursday, a Stomp user put up a screen capture of a SingTel inSing advertisement, apparently found at a prawn website. Disgusted said he received the screenshot in an email from a friend, and had subsequently put it up on the Stomp (Straits Times Online Mobile Print) citizen journalism website to highlight the issue.

‘Is Singtel really so desperate that they need to resort to putting advertisements on [prawn] sites in order to get attention?’ he said.

SingTel, he added, ‘is a well-known company from Singapore. The ad really spoils the image of our country and should be taken down immediately. I am shocked that such a thing could happen.’

A SingTel spokesman said that it was ‘taking this matter very seriously and thoroughly investigating the situation.’

The company, she added, advertises only on ‘relevant, appropriate and family friendly websites which would be seen by users of inSing.com – a lifestyle destination website providing a Singaporean point of view on what to do and where to go for all members of the family’.

inSing, a Singapore-centric directory service offering news, event listings, and user-generated reviews, was launched this May. According to website tracking service Hitwise, it is Singapore’s 14th most popular website.

New media expert Calvin Siew said a ‘rogue site’ may have tricked SingTel into placing the advertisement.

Cash-strapped, unethical website operators, said Mr Siew, media agency Waggener Edstrom’s manager for its digital practice, have been known to label themselves with fake keywords. These labels may trick automated online advertising engines into placing their ads with them, generating revenues for the website in question.

The prawn site could not be identified from the screenshot. Most Stomp users though, did not appear as disgusted as the poster Disgusted.

‘The inSing.com ad is about Satisfying Hunger at affordable price,’ said another Stomp user, dontbsmee, tongue-in-cheek. ‘Maybe they think it’s a good place to place the ads for people that have cravings.’

SingTel’s Clarifies What Happened:

SingTel has confirmed that an online ad for inSing.com, a website run by the telco, had indeed been posted on a prawn website.

It says this was due to a fault by a third party supplier, whose services have since been suspended. The advertisement on the porn website has also been removed.

The statement from SingTel came in response to a posting in STOMP yesterday (Aug 20), which highlighted the issue after STOMPer Disgusted alerted STOMP of the inSing.com ad on the website.

This is the reply from SingTel in full:

“SingTel Digital Media (STDM) takes the matter of advertising on inappropriate websites very seriously and has thoroughly investigated the situation.

“STDM’s policy is to only run advertising on relevant, appropriate and family friendly websites. The online advertising was purchased on an advertising network, a standard practice for online advertisers.

“Clear guidelines were provided to .Fox Networks on the criteria required for the ad placements on inSing.com.

“.Fox Networks, which does not represent [prawn] content websites, followed the guidelines submitted by STDM to reach the targeted audience and executed the campaign to exclude all [prawn] content categories.

“However, one of the third-party suppliers of inventory to .Fox Networks wrongly classified the [prawn] section of a website in a way that led .Fox to believe that it was a suitable environment for advertisements.

“The advertising has since been removed and .Fox has suspended such third-party supplier.”

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