Editorial vs. Advertising, by Jeffrey Veen

Editorial vs. Advertising

I did a lot of work on integrating advertising into content sites back when I was at HotWired. We were inherently an editorial organization, and there was a pretty strict separation between content and ads. But we fought a constant battle with the sales department, especially in the later years when the bottom fell out of the banner market. They would perpetually lobby for a few more pixels here and there -- a new unit on the home page, a couple more "sponsored links" on the results page. It was, frankly, exhausting.

Later, after we were acquired by Lycos, I pretty much gave up. They were a marketing-driven company, and were publicly traded. They had no heuristics for the sanctity of editorial and we often found ourselves being ordered to do atrocious -- frequently downright deceptive -- design treatments to ensure ads were getting the appropriate amount of clickthrough. Mostly, this came towards the end of each quarter, as executives desperately tried to book enough revenue for the quarterly report to shareholders. I finally realized that I'd be unable to do much good work there, and left the company.

I bring this up because I still clearly have issues with poorly-executed advertising. It's been heartening to see Google's unwavering dedication to user-centered, relevant, and minimal advertising. But recently, when following a link to a PC Magazine article, I was stopped in my tracks by what must be the most egregious abuse of advertising I've ever seen. Back in my days as a newspaper guy, we generally had a 60/40 split between ads and copy. What do you think pcmag.com's numbers are? I've highlighted the "story" I was after in the image below:

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 7 April 2004 at 10:06 PM. It was filed under Web Design. | View blog reactions

Comments

1. On 7 April 2004 at 10:18 PM Adam wrote:

I think the third column rail has some headlines and what not in it, so at least the entire greyed-out area isn't ads. But yeah, wow - would you like some content with your advertisements?
Where I work the ads guys always "joke" that we should give our readers the option to follow a link to an "ad-only page," where they could browse the pushy banner ads and promotions without all the formalities of wanting to actually find useful content. They really, truly think it's a great idea.

2. On 7 April 2004 at 10:25 PM John Y. wrote:

It's things like this that make me very happy that most of my web design is done for government. They don't sell ads (yet).

3. On 7 April 2004 at 11:04 PM Nick Finck wrote:

That is amazing... I can't believe anyone will read the "content" for much longer.

4. On 7 April 2004 at 11:20 PM Dave S. wrote:

My wife went through a magazine last week and ripped out every page that was pure advertising front and back. The ripped pages were a shade thicker than the resulting magazine.

The kicker is that the one-side-ad, one-side-content pages and interstitial ads still summed up to more than half of what was left.

So is this a surprise? Not really. Is this a cry for help? Likely.

5. On 7 April 2004 at 11:42 PM ben wrote:

The math seems pretty simple to me, especially after reading Dave's comment - the ad salespeople are kickin' a** 'n takin' names because that's what's going to keep their pub afloat, online or off.

Hooray.

Has it occurred to any of the geniuses out there that info overload applies just as much (if not more) to ads, as it does to content?

Gawd.

6. On 8 April 2004 at 3:39 AM Phil Baines wrote:

Yep, that be what I call Advert Saturation Syndrome, AKA: ASS!

7. On 8 April 2004 at 11:04 AM Justin Hitt wrote:

Not to play the other side of the story here, but if advertising didn't pay for the resources to publish the materials, it would be up to the reader. Are readers ready to pay for 100% pure content? Even 80% content?

On my own site I run primarily in house and topic related (very hand selected) ads at the bottom of content, CTR runs between 1.5% and 4.7%. However, my volume is much less than PC Magazine.

It is absurd to have more than one ad on a page, even then to break the golden 60/40 content/advertising split -- Who is the publication for if not the reader?

Sincerely,

Justin

8. On 8 April 2004 at 12:06 PM James Craig wrote:

I don't mind a ton of ads in print magazines, as long as there is good content to keep me coming back. There is a fine balance though; is the content good enough to be worth my time flipping through the ads to find it?

The thing that really ticks me off is the sponsored editorials... You may notice that a "featured company" in some magazine also has a few full page ads throughout. There is even one Graphic Design magazine that let's you buy space to promote your principals or new hires in their "people" section. I could take out a half-page "editorial" ad on myself if I wanted to.

I don't mind ads as long as they are accompanied by journalistic integrity. Real content, good content, and not an attempt to trick the readers.

9. On 8 April 2004 at 1:34 PM Ryan Gantz wrote:

What's this junk about Bob Villa doing disrupting a perfectly good page of ads and sponsored content?

10. On 8 April 2004 at 2:04 PM Vincent Flanders wrote:

Why aren't you using ad-blocking software?

Check http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/images/pcmag.jpg for an example of the PC Mag home page with and without ad-blocking.

It still doesn't deal with all the ads on the bottom half of the page, but it's a significant improvement.

11. On 8 April 2004 at 2:51 PM Michael wrote:

I can live with the big banners and skyscrapers (I've long since tuned them out) and even ads stuck in the middle of the content, what really bothers me are intrusive ads. The kind of ads that fly around the screen that you have to catch to close them. And when you do finally find that miniscule close button it doesn't really close, it just closes part of the ad. I also don't like rollover ads or scrolling ads that block what I'm reading. As a matter of fact I try my best to never visit companies who's ads have been intrusive to me.

12. On 9 April 2004 at 5:05 AM Branko Collin wrote:

Would people pay for content? They are already paying! Just not with money, but with other content. That's what makes the web so interesting, it's a market of interesting ideas. And since everybody wants to be in this space, the space draws people who want to sell stuff to us.

That's why we have ads on the web. Once the idea of the possibility of advertising took hold on the web, it became clear that people could produce more interesting content if the extra time needed for that work was sponsored. And now we suddenly live in an upside-down world where the basic premise seems to be that if you don't sponsor the web, no content will be created.

You could argue in opposition that the advertising creates a lot of noise that detracts from the value of all that extra content.

13. On 9 April 2004 at 5:59 AM akm wrote:

I do my best to find the "Mobile" content version of the site... for example:

http://mobile.theonion.com
http://www.google.com/palm/

This medium has yet to be overtaken by ads and it's much nicer to see only the content that you want.

There's probably more out there, I just don't read that many sites with ads on them.

14. On 9 April 2004 at 8:47 AM Michael wrote:

Can you imagine trying to read the entire article one paragraph per page on a dial up connection? Bob Villa's not interesting enough. After the second page, I'm gone.

15. On 11 April 2004 at 7:32 PM John Morse wrote:

The paragraph of "content" to which you refer promotes the Bob Vila brand, the This Old House program, the Bob Vila website, and the associate online store. That's four ads in the highlighted section. The rest of the page might be less promotion-dense.

16. On 12 April 2004 at 7:34 AM Charlie wrote:

Jeffrey, a question about that screenshot: did you paste it together from several images or have you found a good way to take taller-than-monintor-resolution screenshots of webpages?

17. On 12 April 2004 at 8:16 AM Mike wrote:

Good observation. Sadly, my expectations are now so low that I saw this page a few days ago and didn't think twice about it. Content is pawn.

18. On 13 April 2004 at 1:35 PM griff wrote:

The screen shot is amazing.

I blame Las Vegas for this trend. It is stragely similar to navigating through hundreds of slot machines just to get to the bathroom.

Advertising is amazing in that it eventually destroys it's self. It's most successfull tacticts over time lead to futility. My eye has been trained to not notice banners any more. The mute button on my remote cancels out the increased volume in television advertising, And so on.

I wonder if anyone has done a study on the life cycle of advertising techniques. It would be fascinating.

19. On 13 April 2004 at 1:51 PM krf wrote:

Screen shots can be had using this tool - http://www.snagit.com/products/snagit/default.asp?lid=SnagItHome

20. On 16 May 2004 at 8:31 PM tdw wrote:

Mac users try:

http://www.stclairsw.com/index.html

21. On 16 May 2004 at 8:39 PM tdw wrote:

or for MacOS X:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/screencapturemac/

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