Promoting Quaker Quaker as a lucrative advertising venue

I was startled today when I logged onto Quaker Quaker's Bay Area geographical list, and was greeted by the following display ad: 

 

Advertising on QuakerQuaker

 

QuakerQuaker.org reaches a highly-targeted audience of Friends and seekers. In Eighth Month 2009, it brought in over 10,000 visits and 43,000 page views. According to direct measurements from Quantcast.com, its readership is:

 

  • Affluent: 29% of its active readership comes from households making over $100,000 per year and 57% from households making over $60,000.
  • Highly educated: 48% percent have college degrees and 23% have post-graduate or graduate degrees.
  • With school-aged children: 23% have children 0-17 years old.

 

(see full adverisement at: 

 

 

The ad continues with readership statistics and further enticements to marketers. 

 

It seems to me to exploit Quakers for one of our dubious attributes:  Elite social status. 

 

How would this come across to a net surfer visiting QuakerQuaker.org to learn more about Quakerism?   It feels to me as though an important, change oriented spiritual community is promoting itself by gloating about how much privilege and wealth we enjoy. 

 

Given how many Quaker activists are grappling with Quakerism's embarassment at being predominently white, highly educated and affluent, this promotion strikes me as inconsistent with the integrity, equality and justice we seek to realize among ourselves and in relationship with the rest of Humanity. 

 

David Hoffman

Member, Redwood Forest Friends Meeting (unprogramme)

Santa Rosa, California

dhoffmanlaw@earthlink.net

Views: 109

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Martin Kelley on 2nd mo. 5, 2010 at 11:08am
QuakerQuaker has been advertiser supported for years. It brings in about $30 a month, enough to cover server bills, the Ning.com bill and occasional feed subscription. Hardly lucrative. It doesn't begin to cover all of the billable hours I lose working on it.

Most Quaker publications are ad supported. The site also includes a rather large Donate button. If more people clicked on that I'd certainly consider turning the ads off.
Permalink Reply by David L. Hoffman on 2nd mo. 5, 2010 at 11:58am
Dear Martin,

I agree with your use of advertiser support. I don't criticize you or Quaker Quaker for arranging it. I appreciate and value your creation of Quaker Quaker, and the access and networking which it provides to so many of us.

I have serious concerns about the content of this particular ad-promo.

Repeating that concern:

The citing of Quaker Quaker users' affluence and high percentage of college and post-graduate degree holders to make our us attractive to commercial advertisers boasts of our privilege and is inconsistent with the integrity, equality and justice we seek to realize among ourselves and in relationship with the rest of Humanity.

I am guessing this is a generically formatted ad, and the statement about "affluent" is not your wording, but is generated by Quantcast.com software, after it extracts user data and determines that our average or median income is high enough to support the claim we are affluent.

What about replacing that notice with something worded differently, perhaps with a link to Quantcast.com's profile of Quaker Quaker users, click data, etc.?

David Hoffman

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