What the mainstream publishing industry's presence on the Web has trained me to do is to be expert at ignoring its ads. Anything that flashes, bounces, or otherwise behaves like a five-year-old desperate for the teacher's permission to go to the bathroom simply doesn't register with my brain. If something other than legitimate content obscures the whole page, boom! -- the page goes.
Is that what you advertisers want?
Of course, at home I have broadband, so the considerable additional bandwidth required for this absurd barrage of advertising isn't too burdensome (yet). Wandering about outside, though, is another matter. As the owner of an older phone that doesn't support 3G, I have learned that Web pages load only after interminable waits, nearly always because third-party ads take forever to load and the pages are designed not to display content until the ads have finished downloading. I all but completely avoid the Web when I'm stuck with the EDGE connection.
Is that what you advertisers want?
Here's a perceptive comment from someone claiming to work for "a big media company":
... the systems in place are difficult to remove. I tried to sell my bosses on the Deck (didn’t work, we have an in-house ad networks with thousands, if not millions already already invested, tough to change something when, from the purely bottom-line perspective, the status quo works for publishers). A membership system would require infrastructure changes and a total rethinking of the entire system. That’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. In short, the status quo works, it makes money. And that makes it very tough to convince publishers that something needs to change. Over the long run current practices are hurting publishers because they’re alienating their readers, but publishers are only looking at the bottom line, and, at the moment, they’re not seeing that hurt yet.Greg Golebiewski responded and further illustrated the problem:
Back in 2008 when we started pitching publishers about other, better, ways of content monetization (including small or nano payments; they can work for large publishers as well), we received a unanimous “no way,’ even though most of our interlocutors were well aware of the changes in the marketplace and willing to admit that advertising might not be enough to sustain their online presence. Still, they were rejecting anything other than ads. One of our contacts then, had the guts to explain why: publishing is run by advertising guys and they see the other streams of revenue as undermining their role. Most journalists are against direct payments as well. Imagine one or two popular columnists receiving all the tips or on-demand payments, and the rest of the writers close to nothing.If you work in publishing and care more about content than ads, you might want to rethink working for a big publisher, assuming Golebiewski's right about who's running the show.
The trend of the advertising tail wagging the content dog is driving a lot of us away from the ad-supported Web. I, cheapskate extraordinaire, broke down and started paying for the New York Times. Other discriminating readers are going to look for alternative support systems like micropayments. We're looking to escape the torrent of ads -- not just because they're numerous, but because they consume ridiculous amounts of bandwidth and they actively interfere with the primary reason we're on the Web in the first place.
Publishers and advertisers both, wake up before you crush your golden goose under the weight of your ads. Find a better way, because for too many of us, this one isn't working.
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