BostonHerald.com: Bill: Having ads in schools does not make the grade - Business - : "BOSTON - Critics say it's an insidious threat to school children - responsible for everything from obesity and family stress to gender stereotyping and financial woes.

It's marketing, and lawmakers in Massachusetts are weighing a bill that would ban virtually all advertising in schools - creating "commercial free zones" from kindergarten through high school.

The proposed ban, described as the most sweeping in the country, would prohibit everything from scoreboard ads to book covers plastered with product logos. It would even ban news broadcasts in classrooms and music broadcasts on school buses that carry advertising.

The schools are selling something to advertisers that isn't theirs to sell-access to children," complains Alex Molnar, a professor of education. "Students should not be sold as resources.""

"I send my children to school for an education, not to build a relationship with corporate America."

"We are bombarded by images trying to persuade us to consume," says Xavier, a high-school student in California. "Ads in school are an insult to kids' minds."

CBSnews.com: Doctors: Kids Are Too Vulnerable To Ads, Pediatricians Group Urge Partial Ban on Junk Food Advertising And Lament Ads Invading Schools - CBS News: "Children and teens need to be taught to be more skeptical viewers of ads, says a leading group of pediatricians. "Children and adolescents view more than 40,000 ads per year on TV alone," according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Kids younger than 8 years old "do not understand the notion of intent to sell and frequently accept advertising claims at face value," the committee reports.

Advertisers have slowly but steadily infiltrated school systems around the country," the committee writes. "The '3Rs' have now become the '4Rs,' with the fourth R being 'retail.' Ads are now appearing on school buses, in gymnasiums, on book covers, and even in bathroom stalls," notes the AAP.

"Today's kids see ads in many places, including TV, the Internet, and magazines, and need "media literacy" lessons, the committee says.

Half the ads young people see feature food, according to the AAP committee. But "Healthy foods are advertised less than 3 percent of the time," according to the report. "Children rarely see a food advertisement for broccoli."

Teachers Union Says No to Ads in Schools: "Seattle Schools are inundated every week with promotional items, corporate-sponsored curriculums, marketing Œcontests¹ and gimmicks.

A year ago, the district signed a 5-year exclusive Œpouring rights contract with the Coca-Cola Corporation in exchange for a commission on the Coke products sold to kids.

Last April, the district signed a contract with N2H2 permitting banner ads on web pages seen by children at school in exchange for a filtering service.

Individual principals in many secondary schools require all students to watch commercial ?TV every day in exchange for the use of some television equipment (ŒChannel One). "

Consumer Groups Lobby to Remove Ads From Schools ""We are writing to ask for your help to turn your industry's conscience into a reality, and to protect our children and their education from aggressive marketers," the letter reads. "We believe it is wrong for a company to use compulsory-school-attendance laws to force a captive audience of children to listen to advertising. As most practitioners in the field recognize, successful advertising depends on the willing participation of both advertiser and consumer. BusRadio and Channel One violate this fundamental principle."

Bad publicity forces ZapMe! to end program with school districts: "11/21/00 -- Some 2,000 schools across the country are facing a tough choice: Shut down high-speed Internet computer labs they received from the ZapMe! Corp. or find the money to pay the company big bucks to keep the labs running.

Two years ago, the San Ramon, Calif.-based ZapMe! Corp. offered to outfit schools with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free computer labs and technical support.

In exchange, the schools had to agree that the computers would be used for at least four hours a day and the company could feature advertisements on its "netspace" and monitor students' Web browsing habits--by gender, grade level, and school zip code--but not student name."

"We would be really disappointed if we had to lose this," says Scott M. Levengood, technology coordinator at Hamilton Middle School in Baltimore. "The inconvenience of a small flag of advertising on the screen is nothing compared to the benefits that this brings to the kids."

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 12/6/07; 11:03:26 PM to the Ads for schoools dept.
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Against ads in schools

MediaWise.org: Commercial Advertising In Schools: "Business involvement in schools has a long history. Scholarships, donations, and mentoring projects are often positive for schools and businesses alike. But at what point does corporate involvement target students not as learners, but as consumers and potential customers?
Did you know?

In elementary, middle and high schools direct advertising to students can be found on:

• Book covers: free book covers with ads, such as Frosted Flakes and Lays Potato Chips, are distributed to students. In 1998 over half of American students, 25 million, received book covers (Consumer Reports, 1998).
• "Educational posters" in hallways advertise candy such as Skittles, 3 Musketeers and Starburst (Education Digest, 2000).
• School lunch menus. Brand name foods are served, advertised and promoted in school cafeterias (Education Digest, 2000).
• Reward coupons: McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Domino's Pizza provide coupons for pop, french fries, burgers or pizza as a reward in reading programs (Education Digest, 2000).
• School buses: Some districts have sold ad space on the sides and even the tops of school buses (Time Magazine, 1999).
• Teaching materials: industry teaching units, videos, and contests may incorporate products, brands or corporate viewpoints (Consumer Reports, 1998).
• Channel One: Viewed daily in 12,000 middle schools and high schools by about 8 million teenagers, students are required to watch a 12 minute program: 10 minutes of info-news and 2 minutes of commercials (The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education).
• Commercial search engines, web sites and student newspapers (United States General Accounting Office, 2000).
• School Web sites supported by businesses that include direct advertising aimed at students and parents (The Christian Science Monitor, 2001).
• Athletic fields, scoreboards, gyms, libraries, playgrounds, classrooms: Corporate donors are recognized for their donations by placing their names or logos in prominent locations (New York Times, 2000).
• School events paid for or sponsored by corporations, i.e. Homecoming sponsored by Dr. Pepper (Time Magazine, 1999).
• Soft drink machines: schools are bargaining for exclusive contracts with soft drink suppliers like Coke and Pepsi (Manning, 1999).
• Fundraising: school groups receive a percentage of sales of branded products (United States General Accounting Office, 2000).
• Student organizers and other products sold in schools to students. The school receives a small percentage for items sold in return for advertising (United States General Accounting Office, 2000)."

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 12/6/07; 11:02:49 PM to the Ads for schoools dept.
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Ads in the US

Wealth gap in learning, by age 3: "By the age of three, children from disadvantaged homes are up to a year behind in their learning than those from more privileged backgrounds."

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 12/6/07; 9:38:44 AM to the Education news dept.
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Who's surprised?

It's hardly worth anyone's while to sell, manage and run ads on a site that has very little traffic, and you have to examine the traffic you are receiving, take out the search engines, which, for many sites is a very high proportion and the rest of the junk. An advertiser, a savvy advertiser, will want to see your logs, they'll want to ensure they are getting value for money, they will want real people reading their ads, real people reading your website.

I've been asked several times, if I can supply my advertising plug-in as a stand alone. That is, they have existing sites, or are about to build a site, in house... And don't want one of mine.

At first I was interested in re-working my plug-in such that it could be used in this way. But, as I look at these sites, I know, in my gut, that these sites will have a very low traffic rate. There is no changing news, there is no reason to return again, and again. Traffic will be low, therefore, the inventory will be low. Worse, there'll be no way, with the current websites to increase this. At least with a weblog, you know if you keep on posting new news, your traffic will increase. If you post more local, topical news, even turning your school's site into a local discussion group, or local social network, which you can with our sites (or with a second or third duplicate of our sites) your traffic can rocket. As can your ad inventory and your income.

As an example here's a small, not very interesting site, go once, no need to ever go again.
Pockington Montessori School
Another school, with updated news, but dumped deep inside the site as PDFs.
Glebe House School and Nursery
A secondary school, with a large site, but nothing new, nothing blog-ish. Most traffic will be search bots.
Dover College
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 12/6/07; 9:10:54 AM to the Ads for schoools dept.
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Ads and traffic