According to MediaPost, The Online Publishers Association yesterday announced that 37 of its members, including juggernauts like The New York Times, Forbes, ESPN, CNN and MSNBC.com are (or are soon going to start) running the new, larger ad units the organization introduced last March. Since the members who are running these campaigns for brands like Bank of America and Mercedes-Benz reach about 68% of the total U.S. Internet audience, there’s a good chance you will soon see them, too.
There’s also a good chance you’ll hate them.
The three new ad units are named and sized as follows:
- The Fixed Panel (336×700) – remains in view as a user scrolls up or down the page
- The XXL Box (468×648), the extra wide side-of-page ad that expands to 936 x 648 and includes page-turn and video capability
- The Pushdown (970×418), which opens big to display the ad and then after seven seconds rolls up to the top of the page (collapsing to 970 x 66).
The first one was actually supposed to be 860 pixels in height, but they reconsidered it and brought it down to 700, reportedly after feedback from publishers.
In order to visualize how big these ads are in their most expanded state, I overlayed the TechCrunch homepage with boxes of the same size:
Here’s how OPA President Pam Horan justified the introduction of the new ad units:
“The real motivation was to provide marketers and agencies with the opportunity to deliver a branded experience directly on the pages of these very rich content sites.”
But what about the children website visitors?
Nobody seems to really care, apart from the fact that OPA recommends their members that the frequency of the pushdown ad be capped at once per day per page. Horan says it passed that recommendation on because they “want to stay close to consumers”. I puked in my mouth a little.
Is it just me or does anyone else think that display advertising units on websites should become more relevant to them instead of just bigger? What’s next, 1200×600 ads?
Indifferent because I never see any 3rd-party ads on any website.
One single AdBlock Plus filter of *doubleclick* will prevent you from seeing about 30% of all ads. Adding pagead*.googlesyndication.com/pagead/*
will push that up to about 50%.
See? people don’t like the way ads are served today.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the new sizes – but advertisers need to realize that *when* the user sees the app matters more than the quantity of ads in a page. Currently any ads pop up right after visiting a website – at the moment people are least possible to be interested in them since they ‘ve just clicked on something else.
dead display ads should be mouseover-interactive. and they should charge extra for every interaction with users.
lol, and you wonder why doubleclick (and any other ad network for that matter) doesn’t care about AdBlock and hasn’t done anything to by-pass adblock… because you people don’t buy anything online anyway.
I buy lots of stuff online.
I just don’t click on ads.
I buy: software, hardware, clothes, music, services (you know, that cloud stuff).
Don’t act stupid todd… Users just don’t like spam ads on their face… And for the record I buy most of my stuff online (close to a few hundred bucks a month)
I too buy online the majority of the time. I also block ads when possible. I hope someday the vultures catch on to this…
So not only do you steal from your favourite websites (like Techcrunch), you think it is so acceptable that you can brag about it?
I can understand the motivation behind music and movie piracy – download a movie instead of paying $20 – but are people really such princesses that they can’t even scroll past a few ads??
… and who are you to get to decide what is “stealing”, and what is a “few” ads? The only one to properly decide that is the end-user, and if the provider is not seeing acceptance of his product then he needs to rethink presentation his product in a manner palatable to the consumer
Yes. And that’s why whenever a company offers an ad-free version of their service for pay, I gladly pay for it. I download TV shows from iTunes instead of TiVoing them specifically because I hate ads. I hate them enough that fast-forwarding through them is still too annoying.
So when I go to a web site, or a movie, or whatever, and I get advertising thrown at me, I’m immediately turned off.
Unless the ads are very specifically tailored to me, and they actually teach me something I don’t already know about a product that I may actually want to buy, then they are an annoyance. That’s what the gesture movement was supposed to be about—learning about us to target ads at us. But it doesn’t seem to be working.
Web 2.0 has pretty much turned out to be just another rehash of web 1.0. If the business model of “give it all away for free and pay for everything with web ads” didn’t work the first time, I don’t see how it’s going to work the second time. It’s clearly not working, if the ads need to be getting bigger and bigger and harder to ignore. That means the majority of people are ignoring them. Big surprise.
“If the business model of “give it all away for free and pay for everything with web ads” didn’t work the first time, I don’t see how it’s going to work the second time.”
Google and plenty of companies out there makes a living off of web ads and you are telling me that they don’t work? Maybe you are right. Maybe people ignore then and never even think about clicking them. But there are definitely enough people paying for them. And that all that matters in the end.
The web runs on same principle as any media platform – users get free content in exchange for the right for the publisher to sell ad and place ads, so in that vain, I get why publishers need to sell ads. However, I totally agree with the sentiment that more and bigger isn’t better, in fact I’m pretty sure it’s worse.
My questions is whether we really would rather see more targeted and relevant ads or if that would freak people out. How much information do you think most people would be willing to share to get to a level of ad relevancy that’s actually meaningful? As much as I’d love to get an ad that I feel is tailored to me and delivers some sort of benefit, but I’m not sure that I’d be willing to give publishers that much personal info to make that happen.
Would love to hear thoughts.
Agree with you here Miguel. The amount of data that google and doubleclick have on users is already staggering. Even without us “willingly” sharing any additional info on top of, simply, our day to day surfing habits.
Advertisers need to do a better job of creating more engaging and relevant ad content. Taking more pixel space will only be another short term “solution”.
Perhaps he isn’t stealing from TechCrunch at all. Personally, I disable AdBlock Plus (which is awesome, by the way) on sites I visit everyday such as TC. It is nice though to have AdBlock cut out all those gigantic flashy and just plain irritating ads.
It’s not stealing, it’s simple cause and effect. Advertisers produced annoying and intrusive ads. Somebody makes a tool to reduce the noise. The advertisers created this. Users were pushed to the limits and created blocking software (which is a close relative to a spam filter) to get rid of all the “visual spam” that’s popping up in our faces.
You obviously don’t know what stealing is. Seriously, how can not wanting to look at an advertisement possibly be equated with stealing? What’s next? Is it stealing because I toss out all the advertisement that comes with my local paper? Is it stealing because I don’t want to listen to some sales person? Of course not and neither is blocking advertisement that I don’t want to see on my computer. Next time look up the meaning of a word before throw out some outlandish claim.
Since you assumedly paid for your local paper before “tossing out the advertisement” (you must have a lot of time and a sharp pair of scissors) this is hardly a relevant example. Pay for the content you view online and then you can block the ads without being considered larcenous.
“Larcenous?” Please. If the day comes that TechCrunch wants me to pay to access the site, then I will probably cough up a few bucks to have access. However, there is no agreement binding or implied that requires me or any other visitor to view the ads they put up. Yes, it is good form to view them as it supports ad revenue-based sites, but sometimes ads will actually drive me away from a site I would otherwise read. AdBlock saved my sanity long ago and has probably resulted in my spending more time on a given site and then recommending it to friends, family, and colleagues – which ultimately will probably help the site out more than if I clicked on an ad.
There are also plenty of free newspapers/magazines that are solely ad-funded. Throwing away those ads isn’t stealing either.
Stealing because I don’t want ads flashing in my face??? Sorry, I’m old and easily distracted. I CANNOT read something on a screen with animation / flashing / colors / pop-ups when I move the cursor / all the other distracting advertising.
If ads were plain and off to the side, MAYBE I’d look at them. Still wouldn’t click. I buy plenty of stuff online, just never through click ads.
At home, I block all ads. At work, I cannot. If I encounter a site that I cannot read because of flashing ads distracting me, I stop visiting that site. If a specific ad really bothers me, I’ll take note… and never ever patronize that company / buy that product.
That’s all.
How on earth is not looking at adverts that you’re not going to click anyway (which if you did look at, and then not click, would only drive down their clickthrough rates and earn the publisher less in the long term) considered stealing?!
Puh-lease
I always turn off AdBlock for sites I use regularly. If a site has objectionable ads when I do that, then I don’t visit that site anymore.
Anybody else noticed how some (irrational) people want FREE content but don’t want to see any ads????
People! Somebody has to actually PAY for the content.
Get real.
I’ll pay for it when you stop shoving ads in my face.
(Self-censored ’cause I’m at work, but imagine some profanity in that sentence.)
Your plight must be unbearable…
It wasn’t until 9:15 am PDT,
I think you’d be surprised how many people would have no problem paying for access to a site as opposed to seeing ads. I know I’d pony up small monthly fees for ad free access to a site like TechCrunch.
+1
Nice article pic though Robin
LOL, You have confused me with your math. Your fisrt statement is, that you “nevernever see any 3rd-party ads on any website”. Oh really?
50% protection means you should be catching the other 50%, or are you one of those people who only surfs 10 or less websites and tries to give the rest of the people the impression that you are Duke Kahanamoku of the internet.
have you ever considered that the publishers of the content you seek have to make money somehow?
if everybody starts doing what you do nothing will be free on the internet anymore, i hope you’re willing to pay for content!
Your browser must be slow as hell, all that filtering, ads don’t bother me one bit, i appreciate seeing them and critique them, and think more highly of a sponsor i see on my favorite site, i associate them with supporting techcrunch and would be more likely to do business with them, not because of the size of the ad, but because of the percieved association, even though i understand it’s from a large ad buy, i figure if they are a no good by the way company, someone managing the ad campaign for techcrunch would weed that advertiser out, bottom line do your homework before u buy. But cmon folks, everything is for sale.
You know honestly, as long as the ad is aesthetically pleasing and doesn’t look like an ugly Google mess, then they don’t really bother me at all. I think spending more money on a professional designer would go a long way in the ad department.
For example, MediaTemple and LiveStream are the only two that don’t look like complete garbage on the right hand side TechCrunch. I guarantee I will click on something I like looking at first.
I personally don’t allow ads that don’t work with the aesthetics of any of my sites, and I let advertisers know this.
agreed. It’s actually a common and natural thing to learn how to scan a page looking for the actual content and ignore the ads. You could test people by having them look at a few pages and then ask them what products were advertised on them. Most people couldn’t name even one. We just learn to ignore them.
@DaveBarnes is right, it just makes people who didn’t mind them before, go the extra step and find a way to block them.
http://adblockplus.org/en/
I honestly don’t believe that interruptive ad techniques truly belong online any more than they do on TV. The Internet is about conversations, and banner ads are the equivelant of a lecture on why you should choose a brand. Ever sit through a commercial on Hulu and ask yourself “Why?”
No, because I use my brain for two seconds and realize this is how they are paying for such an awesome FREE service to us.
Advertising is a part of our life and will never go away. get used to it.
I hope you’re wrong about advertisements that are intrusive.
“get used to it”
My DVR, Adblock Plus, and mp3’s (legal, of course) have helped me get used to it quite nicely, thank you very much.
But the thing is most people just get annoyed.. you are making a logical assumption that is lost in the emotion of annoyance.. see the problem is not ads, it is the fact that most link to crap sites… and thus you have to be annoying.. and it might work for you but for me I boycott annoying ads and the companies that power them… I youtube about those companies, I blog about them and with posterous I get 7 blogs and I facebook and I twitter..plus a few others.. users just want something useful and non-annoying.. why can companies grasp that simple concept.. cause you annoy me angry nerd gets out.
That’s great Dave, but I prefer to support sites by viewing their ads. However when you need a monitor the size of a tank to view everything is when I start to grumble. Sites need to make cash but not at the expense of user experience. There needs to be a balance and it needs to come from the top down, the big sites need to show the way. These formats won’t last long if the viewers vote with their (anti-)clicks.
*sigh* People are trying, but AdBlock is making it hard. I really like the BuySellAds.com ad network. No flash ads, the publisher sets their price, and the publisher can approve every ad as they come in.
Unfortunately, *.buysellads.com has been added to the EasyList filter for AdBlock. So I started using a caching system to prevent the ads from being blocked, which subsequently increased my ad impressions by a significant amount. But then, alas, the EasyList was updated to block the ads at a DOM level.
Any attempt to improve upon the state of online advertising is met with still more resistance. Free content isn’t good enough for some people…
Ask your users to disable adblock for your site. If people like your content and you run good ads, then they’ll do it.
Big mistake from what perspective? Advertisers are itching for new ways to get their message across. These bigger ad units have a much better click-through rate regardless of how annoying you think they are, and the sites can charge a higher CPM.
From a website visitor perspective. I think you really think 1200×600 ads would be a good idea.
That’s about a full screenful on a standard 15″ laptop. Hahaha….. Makes you experience site A as if you had just typed site B into your browser. Nice.
Kind of like those full-page ads (”The page you requested is loading…”) that appear when you visit sites like GameSpot.com, with a little “Skip” button that doesn’t appear for 5-10 seconds?
It’s like a Flash intro, only worse.
in fact the former ads are still tolerable…
They may have a better click rate, but what about conversion rates? It seems like bigger ads make it more likely that users will accidentally click on them, and accidental clicks aren’t likely to result in a sale.
Good point,
It’ll be interesting to see what that looks like. Click rate will cost more $ but unless its converting in to earnings for the businesses they may rebel.
You know I think that you would be surprised how many big brands that would pay for these ads don’t care about conversion rate and only care about eyeballs.
Many big brands are still stuck in the traditional media days, because their agencies tell them eyeballs matter and they need to only sell their brand. It is true that brand matters, but it is amazing how little attention big brands pay conversion rate because the marketing managers ego is so big that they only want to do the fun and “creative” brand advertising.
I disagree. Sure there are some crappy agencies that don’t understand how online advertising works and are happy to sell the “eyeballs = dollars” mantra. But it’s not widespread. Advertisers and agencies aren’t spending as much on display advertising precisely because the impressions haven’t had a measurable effect on sales.
Exactly, any ad clicks on my part are the ads getting in my way and getting clicked accidentally. If they get money for that, good for them – probably last time I visit the site that does it. And I hit back or shut the window (no tabs at work) immediately.
See… ads in print media were a bit irritating (trying to find the ‘rest’ of an article), but at least they didn’t MOVE or FLASH or JUMP out at you (for the most part). The ads were there, for me to see, and if I was interested, good. Some of them would even be pretty or cool. They didn’t attack my senses.
“These bigger ad units have a much better click-through rate regardless of how annoying you think they are.”
And that’s the key. If they weren’t revenue generators, they wouldn’t be used. So, it’s not “just you”, it’s just not enough of you to matter.
-T
“If they weren’t revenue generators, they wouldn’t be used. So, it’s not “just you”, it’s just not enough of you to matter.”
75% of the poll were either disappointed or angry. That 75% is “enough of us to matter.” As a publisher, it would be wise to consider your audience when choosing ad formats.
When a reader’s attention is continually broken by advertisers metaphorically snapping in our face and dancing in the background when we’re trying to read, I (and many others) will find a new site to read from.
And that is a revenue killer.
I guess you have to look at site traffic to see if it is being affected. A lot of people complain about the ads, but if site traffic doesn’t suffer then the publishers aren’t going to do anything about it. The bottom line for most of them is traffic growth and ad revenue.
Until now I’ve left adverts switched on, to be fair to advertising-funded Websites, but this looks like a step too far.
That’s the way to go if they badly want the market share of Adblock-software to reach 100%.
How stupid can one be?
I wouldn’t mind some ads if it wouldn’t distort the whole and cover the content. It’s getting worse and so I’ll stick to my beloved Adblock to get rid of this crap.
I just feel a bit sorry for pages that use a moderate amount of ads.
I hope they start charging your dumb ass..
They can try “charging my dumb ass”, and then we’ll see how useful “they” are to me.
Go eat a jelly doughnut, Techpolice.
Guess what? Eventually your ad block software will be ineffective in the future as HTML 5 gets deployed in major browsers. All the flash haters are pushing for it but a lot of banner advertising will be created in javascript and HTML 5 and you won’t be able to block it. Advertising is here to stay and people should just learn to ignore it. It’s not that bad anyway.
a lot of banner advertising will be created in javascript and HTML 5 and you won’t be able to block it
greasemonkey
Umm… I don’t know where you get that idea from. Advertisement-blocking programs will adapt as well. AdBlock Plus already blocks tons of ads whether they are flash, video, or just plain HTML. And if there are some that still get through, you can customize ABP to block them too.
You obviously don’t understand ABP…
Uhh, do you know that you can block just any URL in adblock? Yeah, even those that point to JS, Images, or any other non-flash content.
You obviously don’t understand how adblock works and how easily it can evolve. HTML 5, ad detection scripts, etc. can do nothing to prevent users from blocking ads.
Truth is, Andrew, that users already ignore ads. That’s why REAL CPMs are so pathetic. cf – Bannerblindness on useit.com
To the point that these larger units have higher click-thrus, it’s most likely that these are stray click on expanding ads. Users are trying to make the ads go away or are clicking on something BELOW the ad, not the ad itself.
That was our experience when we placed our first “slider” in a smaller NP website. They got 100 telephone complaints in an hour.
But, by all means, advertisers, yell louder. That must be the way to make us listen.
Ah… no. A lot of blocking software is implemented as a proxy, stripping out suspect urls and img and object tags long before the browser ever sees them.
I don’t like ads that cover the content of the website. Why don’t the publishers use innovative features on their website instead that offer fresh ad space without annoying the visitors? One example for such a feature is tucent.net They offer comments inside the text of a website – the discussions are show in a window and this window can be used by the owner of the website to show arbitrary advertisements. The website increaeses it’s income and the users get a useful discussion feature – seems like a win-win situation.
I just took a look at tucent – seems like a nice tool for websites …but the ad space isn’t as lage as 970×418.
Jason is right. There is no free lunch.
But there are plenty of overpriced table scraps.
“In your face” advertising is one example.
For me, it’s not the visual effect of the ads (actually it’s good for me to see other designers’ work on display), but the effect all those graphics and javascript have on site download time. Some services are worse than others and when these big sites use 2 or 3 ad services, it takes forever for their home page to load!
@carlton
Don’t you think that if Dave is taking the extra step top block ads on _his_ computer (and they _are_ on his computer), that he’s probably not going to benefit advertisers/producers any, anyway?
And are _you_ really supporting anyone just by viewing ads? Don’t you have to click on them constantly and then stay on the loaded website for a certain amount of time?
Honestly wanting to know — I’ve heard your argument brought up from time to time in regards to this issue, but the rationalization for viewing ads just never seems to make sense to me.
Google Adsense is CPC (cost per click), so for those ads you are correct about having to click them.
CPA (cost per action) means you have to click through and signup/download/purchase/etc for the publisher to get paid. These only work well on very niche and sketchy sites.
However, most banner advertising at respectable sites is CPM (cost per thousand impressions). All that matters here is unique visitors and page views. The first page view is worth the most, and Americans are also the most valuable… so every unique visitor is important.
Hope that helps.
Nah. It’s just you. The most successful pubs of all time have shown oever and over that ad size doesn’t really matter
Think about the Sunday NYT or Cosmo. Those things have been 90% ads forever. No one cares. (Their recent woes don’t have anything to do with having too $any ads, btw)
Relavence is critical too, but that’s not what this standard is about. It’s simply about banner size.
like it says in the post, they should just try to improve their targeted ads. I have found myself actually clicking on targeted ads on facebook and google. Sometimes they’re even useful! But banner ads? Annoying…and if they get any bigger I might just boycott mercedez-benz (as if i could afford them anyway)
I’m with you. I’m totally boycotting all Mercedez-Benz products.
This sucks, now i will be forced to switch on AdBlock Plus
In addition to adblocker there are a few apps that will detect the content and only display that for you.
Here is one:
http://readable....com/setup.html
You set your text viewing preferences, then bookmark the app. When you are on NY times, you click that button/bookmark and it shows you just the article in readable form.
Sometimes it cuts out the article’s pictures though.
Nobody likes non-contextual ads, but people don’t like paying for content either. So unless people start paying their “fair share” of usage, ads are the only way to allow the content providers to continue …wait for it… providing content.
Google has made a lot of money providing contextually-relevant ads, and not only do people tolerate them, but actually use them in many cases.
While their mechanism for doing this is extremely highly evolved, such content providers could implement a very rudimentary filtering system that would at least make an attempt to provide contextually relevant ads, such as tech ads on tech sites (how novel), rather than simply selling space to the highest bidder.
I never click on a google adsense words in those little lame text boxes that show up on sites, even if the links appear to relevant/targeted. They now look like spam to me and half the time they go to those annoying pages of links anyway. Images are much better, so long as they’re not that girl in the biker shorts doing a dance for some mortgage company.
I was looking at some old magazines that had been archived on Google recently and it truly is amazing how many ads are/were in print magazines compared to the amount of content. Its not uncommon for the first 4-6 pages of a magazine to be all ads.
I think this worked for magazines because each one is mostly targeted to a certain niche topic and even seeing the photos within the ads gets you more excited about the topic itself (think seeing ads for a new laptop in a computer magazine).
But with websites I don’t think this kind of in your face, over the top advertising will work as well. People don’t interact with websites the way they did with magazines.
Most of my career has been spent trying to invent “new” forms of advertising that are truly engaging. (I’m still trying
Regardless of the introduction of new technologies or ad types, the real differentiating factor for performance is the creativity of the agency.
The truth is that the creativity behind building engaging ads is rare. Most agencies and advertisers cannot and have not ever created a truly engaging ad. They don’t have the skills or the luck or even just “the right client at the right time.”
Without that powerhouse idea, ads are just pretty designs that you hope people will click. Therefore, the only path for better performance with most agencies and advertisers is to have a bigger ad.
It’s like Viagra for the agency set.
Agreed!
I think the current concept of the bigger the better is just plain stupid. It’s a fact that as more users become “Internet Savvy” less ads are being clicked. This is true especially for in-site ads and not search engine ads which still have a much higher CTR.
I think companies / entrepreneurs have to start thinking creatively. Banner ads that have worked great for the past 10 years are not working anymore. Look at the low CPMs and the declining results of Google AdSense… (great article here: http://www.read...in_the_room.php)
Like said there… there is a HUGE opportunity here for some new form of in-site advertising… maybe social aspects will help. I dont know. I just know something new is around the corner…
Yeah I’ve been seeing more and more of them nowadays. I guess those sites really want to rack as much money as they want. Since they’ve already well established, they won’t be afraid of losing any loyal readers
does any one even care any more? I personally haven’t seen a single add for the last few years thanks to the adblock plus plug-in for Firefox.
you’re going to see more with the adoption of HTML5 in the future. You won’t be able to block them.
I lol’d.
Repeating this nonsense doesn’t make it any better. There is no logical reason why html5 would stop adblock software from working.
Because advertisers will create alternate versions that don’t use flash stupid.
Could you please educate yourself by reading this excerpt from wikipedia?
http://en.wikip...ources_blocking
And AdBlock will roll out support for blocking offensive content, stupid.
Meant <video> content. Excuse me for not sanitizing my punctuation.
andrew…
i’m assuming you’re young.. with a limited tech background..
adblock works by blocking the url the content is coming from…
so yeah… adblock would still work…
unless the owner of the site, created an ad, that continually changed its’ url, then adblock would pretty much work…
peace..
Wait, did you just suggest that we not use the internet for repeating nonsense? Is there some other use for it?
Presumably these new formats are for sites where the content itself isn’t available for purchase.
Usage of ad-block software will go up if ad’s become this large and intrusive. It could become harmful for a brand to be associated with this kind of practice.
Also, advertising works pretty well as is (for those who want it). Are these larger formats really needed, or do we need more intelligent ways to let brand advertise…
too big for an ads. It will be annoying for visitors (for me specifically).
In other news, Firefox & AdBlock Plus downloads have soared to 200%
This is really dissapointing news. Here in Colombia we’ve had that kind of invasive online advertising for years… and some have cried and tried to move to a better experience for the people. Now it’s going to be harder -if the “big guys” at NY Times or CNN do it, why can’t we?
Just saw “The Pulldown” with an ad for Bing on the Wall Street Journal front page. Personally, I didn’t think it was that bad. Mildly aesthetic, but Bing doesn’t have much to do with the WSJ. It grabbed my attention for the few seconds it was up and in my face, blocking off much of the front page, but then it shrunk back down. If I were in a bad mood and not expecting it, I might have been annoyed, but I wasn’t. If only there were a way for websites to make enough money to stay up while not terribly annoying their visitors.
WSJ Online reveals the stupidity of the “ads-or-fees” argument. I subscribe to the online WSJ (as in “give them money”), but I’m still subjected to ads large and small. Furthermore, the WSJ sends a battalion of ads, tracker cookies, and analytics code with every page. I don’t have a quad-core CPU overclocked to 3.9 GHz, so blocking the crud is the only way to keep my browser from going Rip Van Winkle every time I click to another page on the WSJ site.
Apparently they play sound (my volume was on mute). That’s a definite no-no for me. At least they have the option to end the ad video by pressing “Collapse”.
“But what about the website visitors?”
Website visitors rarely if ever seem to ask “what about the publishers”. God forbid they actually shell out a few bucks to the publisher to browse ad free, it’s freer just to run an ad blocker. At some point paying for content became some kind of effrontery to civilized society, gee thanks Chris Anderson.
And your overlay example of the fixed panel pretty much covers exactly the same amount of realestate as those 10 125×125 ad buttons, so I guess it’s six of one or half a dozen of another.
Ya thats true.. Visitors may think annoying like me.
http://effectiv...s-_Big_Mistake-
I don’t know how many of you go to ESPN’s website, but they’ve been in place for about a week so far and it’s absolutely unbearable to navigate it. Half the time the ad takes so long to load (since it’s in flash) that I can’t even use the page for a good minute or navigate away from the homepage’s large ad. It just kills the experience of the website. I can understand ads such as how Pandora does it where it takes over the background, but large and browser intensive ones are detrimental to the website.
I don’t use AdBlock, but if sites that I visit regularly do put up these stupidly large ads, I will be forced to use ABP.
I’m a blogger, and I understand why publishers would want to monetize, but if users can’t view content before viewing tons of ads, they deserve to use blocking solutions.
have you looked at TC lately, while the ad’s are not huge, the space devoted to ads is huge, not complaining, just sayin
“Bigger is Better” In-Your-Face advertising is old school media. It is just a matter of time before it is phased out and replaced by tactical targeted advertising. Smart marketers realize its all about ‘qualified’ clicks as opposed to quantity.
Advertising companies who do in-your-face style adverts are stupid. Notice how there are very few adverts with noises now, and yet 5 years ago there were loads (like those emote ones).
I ignore adverts, and I imagine most regular Internet users do too, because they are just so frustrating and usually nothing I’m interested in.
That’s where I feel AdSense succeeded. The AdSense boxes are usually small and text based so they aren’t annoying (depending on placement) and they are aimed at the site content. I often find my eye getting caught by keywords in an AdSense box. I still don’t click, but at least it succeeds in getting my attention.
AdSense is contextual advertising, not brand building so catching your eye doesn’t do much good. Quick, recite the destination URL of the last AdSense unit that caught your eye. Can’t do it can you, at best you remember a generic keyword. If an AdSense ad unit catches your eye but you don’t click it is a failure, not a success. If you don’t click on those AdSense units sooner or later the publisher will switch to display oriented brand building ad units because that will be the only thing that performs (performance in CMP buys being an impression regardless of subsequent click or conversion).
You have a good point, I can’t remember the brands at all. Well, then I have to say advertising just fails in general. Although, I do like the little square image ones like TechCrunch have down the side. I can almost remember the brands from ones I’ve only briefly looked at.
For those of you that use AdBlock, would you be willing to pay to view/read the content? And if not, how do you expect major news sites to afford to produce content for which they’re not making money? If you can answer that question, please do so.
Yeah, I def agree with that sentiment. Content costs money to produce, hence the ads. If people aren’t clicking on the smaller ads, then maybe bigger will be better. It’s not perfect, but as long as readers are unwilling to pay a subscription to view content, they’re going to have to put up with some annoying ads.
As I wrote above: reasonably sized, non-intrusive ads are ok. But I’m already annoyed about the stuff that most pages throw at me right now.
If the page is dominated by ads and not by content then I’m not looking at the ads anymore but find ways to get rid of them – Adblock.
I really wonder when they’ll realize that bigger ads won’t do them any good. Better ads, clever and cool ads are fine.
But bigger is definitely not better.
They still don’t get how the era of interruption is over, yet another example of shouting at consumers louder when they ignore your message BECAUSE IT SUCKS!
Larger ads are the next curve of online revenue innovation. Didn’t you get the memo?
I don’t even know what is adds anymore after I start using AdBlock Plus. I think this plugin should be installed by default in FireFox.
People should have an option to chose to see ads or block it. No reason to show infront of me junk if I did not asked for that. I never click and I never going to click on any adds no matter how nice they are. `
I’m not clear on whether the expansion of the ads is user initiated.
If the expansion is initiated by under interaction then I don’t see the big deal. You aren’t likely to accidentally scroll over most of those positions.
If they expand automatically then that’a awful and I hope the formats don’t continue to take off. Def don’t like the idea of the fixed panel that stalks you around the page.
Please stop promoting adblock. If it’s become too popular it will be shut down or something. I already saw some sites displaying colorfull warning against adblock when you have it enable.
Funny thing is I do my own adblock with TV and radio. Switching channel or muting the sound during ads. Of course in the US you can’t do that because you would broke your remote too quickly.
They wish
No one can shut down adblock, because adblock is just an offline application that runs as plugin in your browser. You could write your own with little knowledge of javascript (i.e. as a small bookmarklet).
You’re doing what marketers call “channel hopping”, and they are measuring it. That’s why some ad companies are working very hard to make ads enjoyable. Apparently, all the rest is just making them bigger
That’s why google is so rich, because folks there never clicked on banners either, and created context-oriented solution – adwords.
And there’s always “endorsement” and “placement”, they’ll probably last a while longer.
I’ve never used adblock and I never will. People who block adverts are worse than pirates; you’re preventing the people who publish free content from making any money.
Your opinion!
It’s my right to do whatever I like with the page that my browser loads. If i choose to not display (or even not load) parts of it, then there is very little that someone could hold against me.
I would stay away from adblock if ads wouldn’t be that intrusive, annoying and sometimes even noisy. But they are and it’s getting worse – so the only useful response is to block the crap.
I have seen “noisy” adverts once on a website I regular, I contacted the administrators and they had them removed. When you use a website you’re taking bandwidth, if you don’t display adverts you’re stealing that bandwidth. I don’t give a crap if you think it’s “okay”, it isn’t. If you make a website and rely on adverts to survive and I come along and refuse to help you, when you provide a server I like, that’s ok?
Stop being a prick.
Pirates are wonderful people who spread happiness and joy throughout the world, so being worse than them is pretty common.
nytimes has been running a fixed panel Mercedes ad to me all day. When clicked, it fills 100% of the browser. Crap.
I have NEVER purposefully clicked on an ad since I started frequently browsing the internet about 11 years ago.
I don’t use an ad-blocking service. However, I don’t understand how a lot of you are claiming that people who do use ad-blocking are doing the content providers a disservice by doing so. If they’re anything like me, ads have never worked on them either.
Obviously just noticing an ad does some damage in the sense of brand recognition, but other than that caveat, internet ads have never worked on me before, and making them bigger might just persuade me to finally use an ad-blocker.
The writers on Techcrunch, mashable, et al. Constantly write articles about how advertising is worthless, usually confirmed by people in the comments who become actively hostile towards publishers that have the gall to try and show them ads.
Let me layout for you the final answer to this problem (that Google will never let come about)…
Google needs to let publishers sell their own text links, not adsense, but straight up regular old anchor links that pass page rank. A higher page rank means a page shows up higher in the SERPS. Authoritative sites like TC, NYTime, ESP, etc… have high PR that would command a lot of money from sites looking for ways to move higher in the SERPs. Google doesn’t allow the sale of text links (without the nofollow attribute at least) because they claim sites can pay their way to the top of the SERPs (gaming their algorithm which skews heavily towards link juice) rather than provide authoritative content.
Get google to lift this ban without refactoring their algorithm and a lot of annoying advertising could disappear with 5 or 10 unobtrusive text links in a page footer on a publisher site.
What shocks me most of all is that the OPA membership dues are anywhere from $26,250 to $63,000 / year.
Robin, this is an example of how Madison Avenue wants to put interruptive advertising (TV) into a print paradigm. Neither works online, however, because price of interaction is a real form of currency with the medium, whereas it is not with newspapers or TV (at least that’s what they think).
NoScript and FlashBlock in FireFox saves me from seeing almost 100% of ads
I don’t mind big ads. I just don’t want them to be animated. Rolling up and down especially since that shifts the content around I’m trying to read. I actually prefer the bigger ads, just please stop animating them unless I interact with them.