There was a statement of Matt Cutts at PubCon saying Google will penalyze pages with too much ads above the fold. Expect to see that.
Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
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Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#32I find it ironic that I had to disable AdBlock Plus to see the images in the post.
That's a technique I have considered in the past, i.e. making my images look like ads, so that those users either disable the blocker or move on.
If ad blocker users were more than a minority, then I would have to shut my websites down, but thankfully most people allow the ads.
The recent (and potentially upcoming recession) means ad revenue is very weak, so that's why we are seeing/using more aggressive advertising.
Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#33I would argue that once you dismiss ads and scroll down the page that content is entirely readable. The internet has given us an expectation that everything should be free and immediate, and we can't tolerate anything less.
In the old days you paid for a newspaper or magazine with money, now you pay for it with advertising (or you pay money to remove the advertising) - nothing new there, nothing surprising, good content is still good content, and the shit is still there in abundance also ...
Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#34Well, which would we prefer? Seeing the ads, or having to pay for access to each site? Personally, as annoying as ads are, I still prefer them being there to the content not being available at all.
I'm happy to pay for great content - avoid link-bait titles, avoid stupid tiresome "fanboy" flames, use long form content.
I leave ads turned on. There are some ads that just make me close the tab even if I haven't got the content - almost anything with sound will cause an instant tab close.
Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#35There was a statement of Matt Cutts at PubCon saying Google will penalyze pages with too much ads above the fold. Expect to see that.
I'm an AdSense publisher and I get emails from Google suggesting that I add more ad blocks to my site, and also tips on where to place them to get noticed most - above the fold, primarily. They also coach on making the ads stand out by using bold/bright colours. I suspect you'd have to go above and beyond with your ad placements to frustrate Google...
Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#36I would argue that once you dismiss ads and scroll down the page that content is entirely readable. The internet has given us an expectation that everything should be free and immediate, and we can't tolerate anything less. In the old days you paid for a newspaper or magazine with money, now you pay for it with advertising (or you pay money to remove the advertising) - nothing new there, nothing surprising, good cont…
You pay for a newspaper and it still has advertising...
Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#37The future of reading on the web is easy to change, all we need to do is pay some money for each article we want to read without adverts... Unfortunately, the primary impact of putting up a paywall for premium content seems to be to raise huge arguments about why "information wants to be free", not the reality of what happens without one.
The fallacy there is that there is nothing to prevent ads from creeping in even though you do pay. That's been the history of cinema, cable, and internet radio.
Absolutely right, but at the same time if you do pay, you have some (perhaps small) leverage over the content provider to try and ensure the advertising remains of a tolerable quality.
Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#38Well, which would we prefer? Seeing the ads, or having to pay for access to each site? Personally, as annoying as ads are, I still prefer them being there to the content not being available at all.
The issue is not the existence of advertising. The issue is (primarily for me) the new wave of popup ads that don't let you view the content until you find the 30x30 pixel close area. And secondly the sites where ads have become more important than content (reflected in the design.) And thirdly the dozen social media buttons on every single page. Non-horrid advertising should be possible for any respectable website.…
I agree that the social media buttons are a pain, and I certainly advocate against adding them when designing a site, as well as refusing to use them when you're a consumer of the site.
But unfortunately, while I agree that some of the advertising is annoying, I don't necessarily agree with the premise that there's a better option for these sites right now, or that I see examples of better options under development.
Look at the two basic types of adds that you're upset with:
First is the interstitial ad - something you have to view (or at least start to view until you cancel it) - before you can read what you want to read. I generally see these ads on newspaper or magazine sites - or at least a business that used to rely on dead trees to get their content out to people. These ads are more or less equivalent to the full page ads you used to see. Often they aren't really relevant to the content because they don't want to suggest that the contents of the article have been influenced by advertisers.
The second form, where there are more advertisements than content on a page, is quite horrible, and let's be honest, part of the goal of this is to just get some sort of advertisement out there that users will click on. Those ads will possibly me more relevant to you (or at least be somewhat based on the content of the page). But unless you're seeing ads based on the most expensive keywords, the site isn't earning much money. There was a decent article published a while back about what keywords were worth the most money: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/07/18/most-expensive-...
So in the end, I understand your annoyance, but it's also sort of hard for me to dislike companies for trying to make sure they can pay the authors of the site's content.
Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#39The future of reading on the web is easy to change, all we need to do is pay some money for each article we want to read without adverts... Unfortunately, the primary impact of putting up a paywall for premium content seems to be to raise huge arguments about why "information wants to be free", not the reality of what happens without one.
I don't know about most people, but I don't read many articles from the same source: I read a few from some online newspaper, then some from another, then a blog post, etc. Now take NYT.com: the minimum subscription is $15/month - it's absurdly expensive for the three or four articles I might read there. You need to solve micropayments to make paywalls work.
I think the view that NYT.com and www.thetimes.co.uk are taking is that if you pay the $15, you'll end up sourcing most of your news from that site, justifying the price.
I don't know how true that premise is, but it's definitely a simpler solution for them than coming up with a solution to micropayments (which you're absolutely right, does need to get solved).
Re: Please let this not be the future of reading on the web
#40I use, (and pay for), Readability, and I don't really see this as a extra work or a hack or a a necessary evil on my part.
Even if these interstitials weren't there, I'd much rather hit tilde without even thinking, than have to read a page that's even 90% as nice as Readability is with my consistent settings. I do it all the time on blogs without ads or pages that are already very readable like bostonglobe.com.
It's like an office coffee pot, nobody complains that the coffee isn't already sweetened or creamed, they're fine doing the little extra step so that everyone has it the way they want it.
(The one-click send-to-kindle is a time/productivity saver that offsets the cost of that extra click, as it isn't even an option on most sites, and certainly not without hoops to jump through.)