Trust me, as a website owner and blogger, I completely understand how advertising revenue is central to the survivability of your site. I run ads on my own site. I am completely sympathetic to fact that some media outlets enjoy a higher user acceptability factor for advertising than others… TV shows have between 19-22 min of ads per hour while books have none for example. However, when I woke up to CNN.com’s website refresh this weekend, I had to shake my head. I was suffering from an acute case of Internet Advertising Overload!
Here is a picture of what CNN.com looked like in February 2008. You can click on the thumbnails to see them blown up. Note that the main, “above the fold” ad is about 17% of the page and off to the lower right. It is tucked down, under the news stories, is set apart, and does not integrate into the color scheme.
Now, look at this weekend’s revamped layout. The big ad is now 33% of the page, on the top right, even with the breaking news story and story of the day. It is above the headline section now and color coordinated to make your eye follow into it. For a real eye-opener, consider what this site looked like on my 1024×560 resolution netbook…I only saw three things — with one being the advertisement.
Again, I am sympathetic to the need to pay the bills. I know that running a news site is expensive. What I am complaining about has more to do with integrity and meaning. CNN bills itself as the first name in the news business. They push to you constantly that, “This is CNN”, implying that their first concern is journalistic integrity and fairness. Well what this site redesign tells me is that the foxs are running the hen house here. There can be no doubt that generating advertising revenue on the web is really their first concern now. When you push your headlines to BELOW your ads, you have made not just a design or journalistic decision, you have declared your priorities and true motivations.
I don’t want a world of pay news sites on the web. I don’t want Google News to become the only decent impartial news outlet on the web. I know that free sites imply advertising revenue to run them. All, I am saying is that this has gone too far. If your site is about news, or chickens, or cars, then that subject had better get more real estate, priority, and emphasis than your ads, or else you page is really just about revenue generation… and there is a name for that: SPAM!
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for October 27, 2009 by Scott Coughlin
Image Credit: cnn.com
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Internet Advertising Overload
Trust me, as a website owner and blogger, I completely understand how advertising revenue is central to the survivability of your site. I run ads on my own site. I am completely sympathetic to fact that some media outlets enjoy a higher user acceptability factor for advertising than others… TV shows have between 19-22 min of ads per hour while books have none for example. However, when I woke up to CNN.com’s website refresh this weekend, I had to shake my head. I was suffering from an acute case of Internet Advertising Overload!
Here is a picture of what CNN.com looked like in February 2008. You can click on the thumbnails to see them blown up. Note that the main, “above the fold” ad is about 17% of the page and off to the lower right. It is tucked down, under the news stories, is set apart, and does not integrate into the color scheme.
Now, look at this weekend’s revamped layout. The big ad is now 33% of the page, on the top right, even with the breaking news story and story of the day. It is above the headline section now and color coordinated to make your eye follow into it. For a real eye-opener, consider what this site looked like on my 1024×560 resolution netbook…I only saw three things — with one being the advertisement.
Again, I am sympathetic to the need to pay the bills. I know that running a news site is expensive. What I am complaining about has more to do with integrity and meaning. CNN bills itself as the first name in the news business. They push to you constantly that, “This is CNN”, implying that their first concern is journalistic integrity and fairness. Well what this site redesign tells me is that the foxs are running the hen house here. There can be no doubt that generating advertising revenue on the web is really their first concern now. When you push your headlines to BELOW your ads, you have made not just a design or journalistic decision, you have declared your priorities and true motivations.
I don’t want a world of pay news sites on the web. I don’t want Google News to become the only decent impartial news outlet on the web. I know that free sites imply advertising revenue to run them. All, I am saying is that this has gone too far. If your site is about news, or chickens, or cars, then that subject had better get more real estate, priority, and emphasis than your ads, or else you page is really just about revenue generation… and there is a name for that: SPAM!
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for October 27, 2009 by Scott Coughlin
Image Credit: cnn.com
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
This entry was posted by Scott Coughlin on October 27, 2009 at 4:35 am, and is filed under Business of IT, Information Age, Information Technology, News Commentary. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.