Can Advertising Hurt Your Readership? Options

[SEOigloo]

Greetings All!

This is a subject I've been thinking about for awhile and on which I would appreciate some feedback from forum members.

Every day, I make a circuit of about 15 blogs/sites I read. Each one offers something special that I like. I think that Jennifer Laycock is one of the best writers in our industry. Beyond the basic SEO subjects she addresses for beginners, the questions she asks about facets of the industry always strike me as important, fresh and worthy. I love reading her articles. Unfortunately, I've found myself going to searchengineguide.com less and less lately because of the abundance of Flash advertising on the site. Right now, in the top spot on their pages, there is an ad with a guy popping around a screen. This one isn't as intrusive as the last one that ran for weeks and feautured a rapidly morphing image of people's faces that had a flickering, flashing effect to it.

I don't know if it's just my eyes, but I literally find it hard to keep my pupils focused on the text of the articles with all of this flashing going on next to them. Do others experience this? It's like my right eye keeps trying to stray toward the blinking animation, and I actually have to physically exert myself to draw it back to the article I want to read. I have 20/20 vision, according to my last eye exam, and I can't help but think that people with vision that is poorer than mine might be having even more trouble with websites that feature Flash ads.

So much of Usability hinges upon putting the key point of the site in the place the user looks. The user should be able to naturally hone in on that key point, without distractions. I know that the purpose of putting ads on a site is so that the site owner can get an income stream going, but what if the payoff for this is that visitors go away because their eyes are being physically stressed? I can certainly relate to a great organization like Search Engine Guide needing to get some type of monetary reimbursement for all of their excellent hard labor, but I'm confused by a business plan behind ads that so distract from the provided content that the user doesn't know where to look and becomes confused about their initial intention of reading an article. Am I being naive?

If it were some other website, I really wouldn't care much. I'd just leave it and not come back. But I really do admire Jennifer's writing, and keep confronting this issue when I visit the website and I would appreciate knowing, for usability purposes, do ads like these cause this phenomenon with your eyes? Would you use this type of ad on a revenue-generating site? Would you click on these ads because they are so in-your-face, or would you be more inclined to click away to another screen?

Thanks.
Miriam

[Black_Knight]

We're both of a similar demographic, Miriam, in that we are both quite web-savvy and aware, we read widely, and we believe if something is worth hearing about, we'll hear about it in reviews and gossip, not advertising. As such, we have a deep belief that advertising just isn't for us, and just something that gets in the way.

Our demographic are strongly put off by advertising, but we counter that by also being the most likely to have ad-blockers in our browsers that remove the ads automatically anyway.

If you use Firefox, grab yourself the ad-block extension, enabling you to strip out the intrusions and allowing you to continue to read the good content of sites, and continue to be an advocate of good sites you'd otherwise abandon.

Webmasters with a savy audience are usually savvy enough to want you to continue to read (and recommend) the site without ads, rather than asking you to continue to see ads you will never click in a million years and soon abandon the site forever in frustration.

[EGOL]

I am on both sides of the fence on this one... I really dislike certain types of ads but on the other hand I have websites that operate on the advertising revenue model.

As a website visitor there are certain things that irritate me... (and I will place them into two groups for later discussion)....

Group 1 (really hate these):
* one ad with obnixious, non-stop animation
* multiple ads with non-stop distracting animation
* sound that starts automatically
* 300 pixels of ads above the first word of content
* multiple pop-ups

Group 2 (don't like these):
* ads that entirely block the flow of an article
* pop-ups upon entry or exit

Group 1 websites have a hard time keeping me on the site. Sound is obnixious and I leave immediately. A site with 300 pixels of ads above the first content tells me immedately that they are not proud of their content - so I give that webmaster zero credibility. Multiple pop-ups make me think I have landed on a porn site.

These sites lose my visit and they also lose any chance of a link. Most of my visits to other websites are for the purpose of finding linkable content. But even if the site has impressive content I can't remember linking to a Group 1 website because I don't want my visitors to find that crap on the other end of one of my links. But, it is very very rare to find a site like this with superior content.

Group 2 sites I will tolerate but I don't enjoy them. I will link to them if their content is best on the web in that theme - or close.

On my own sites, I don't do the things in Group 1. I do have some ads with animation but I try not to have ads with excessive animation.

I have no control over what ads arrive through adsense. In general, the animated adsense ads are not extremely flashy and only play for one cycle. I have blocked a few domains with animated adsense ads - but I block a lot more ads because I don't like their content.

A few people have commented negatively about my site because it has ads. My response to that is... anyone, anywhere can use anything on our site at anytime with out paying one cent. If the ads come off of the site we must close it immediately. We could not afford the salaries, office rent, hosting, bandwidth, computers/software, etc without the ads. When I asked them to name a site with comparable content and no ads they could not name one.

Now, getting straight to the heart of your question. I do lots of analytics - maybe too much - and I have kept careful records of changes to my site and I have all of the logs. For a long time I ran just two adsense units on my site then I changed to four units (three normal ad units and one link unit). There was no detectable loss in time on site or pageviews when I made that change. I have not experimented with Group 1 ad practices becasue there are limits to how far I will go to produce income. Maybe those will change over time but I have no interest at present.

[Kal]

Hi Miriam - I got to SEG almost daily and I haven't seen either ad you're referring to, which makes me wonder if they are AdWords video or image ads being shown to a US-specific audience? (as I'm in Australia). If this is the case, then perhaps Rob and Jenn have implemented AdSense code in that part of the page and simply aren't aware that such obtrusive ads are being shown next to their content? Or are you referring to SEG-specific sponsor ads?

[SEOigloo]

Ammon,
You are so right, it's almost funny. I hadn't realized this about myself before, honestly..I don't think ads are for me! I didn't realize this was a common mindset amongst folks who use the web all day as a work tool, but from what you are saying, it must be.

I am absolutely going to get the Firefox extension. I have different things for this on different browsers I use, but nothing on Firefox. Yay! I'm excited this exists. Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply.

Egol,
Your 2-sides-of-the-fence view of things was simply great. I completely sympathize with the reality that the ads make the websites possible, and it even sounds as if you are really careful about which ads display on your revenue sites, which is not only considerate - it's smart!

I agree with you that those rectangular ads that break up the content are annoying, but I can live with them. Sudden sounds, however, scare the living daylights out of me. I find animation of any kind to be a distraction, but the pulsating, flashing stuff is really the worst.

Your reply was really interesting to read and I appreciate the time you put into it!

Hi Kal
Gosh, I hadn't even considered that Jennifer and her team might not know these ads were there. I'm going to attach a screenshot here so you can see what I'm seeing. In this example, the top and bottom ads are both Flash (the ones in the middle are static). The animation on these two isn't tooooo bad, but the one that was playing for what must have been about a month and recently went away was seriously bad.



Are you seeing what I'm seeing, or do you not see a large column of ads on the righthand side of the site? I really want to know!

Thanks, everyone, for the replies.
Miriam

[Kal]

Yes, I do see those ads now. Either I never noticed them before or they weren't there. I don't particularly find any of them annoying, but I do find animated ones a bit distracting and so usually go look at other stuff until they've finished loading and I can read a page in peace. I don't think they are the usual AdSense units, so must be custom sponsor ads. Rob is always open to feedback so you should let him and Jennifer know if you find particular ads distracting.

[Jozian]

re: Can Advertising Hurt Your Readership
My 2 cents would be: Absolutely.

Killing Readership
I used to love using using The Mining Company (boy, that brings back memories) and what is now known as About.com. Then PRIMEDIA bought them out, and their new 'revenue generating' tactics made me stop using the site completely. In this case, advertising didn't hurt readership, it pretty much killed it.

I don't mind advertising on sites, even lots of advertising. Unless that advertising really interferes with viewing the content. I would say that the site Miriam refers to, Search Engine Guide, is walking a thin line, primarily because there is more advertising than content displayed. If it is moving and talking, it is even worse.

The ads on Search Engine Guide don't bother me much in viewing the content, it's OK with me. But, the high proportionality of ads to content makes me question the sites integrity, and somewhat devalues their brand in my mind. Unfortunate, since the content is good.

Video Content and Ads
I never used to view video content on the web, because it was 1) Poor quality and 2) Made me delay my gratification while I watched a pre-roll commercial. A lot of that is changing, with the rise of YouTube and UGC, but I still refuse to do videos on CNN and ESPN, where an annoying woman keeps sing-songing her intent to 'Buy me a Chevrolet'.

If you want to see a site that does it better than that, check out Heavy.com and the video wrapper and integrated ads that they use.

It's not the advertising that kills readership, it's clueless advertisers, invasive advertising models, and sometimes, poor site integration by content owners, that drives me away.

-Jeff

This post has been edited by Jozian: May 19 2007, 02:52 PM

[AbleReach]

The way ads are presented matters to me. About.com's ads are better than they were. I think they still look too look generic. Is there a better word than that? What I mean is that they look like any spammy site with adsense could have dropped them in place. The tipping point is volume. Do I notice the ads first, and notice the process of getting beyond them to the content? And, the ads are formatted like content. I expect less from a site that uses text link style ads (adsense) like that.

I'm bothered less by image-based ads, unless I have to scroll around them or they move too much. Movement that is triggered by mouse action is kind of fun. Lower contrast movement gets to me less than high contrast movement. And, boring image-based ads are easier to blip over than text link ads that look like the text of content.

My feelings about text link style ads have changed, as adsense has become more common. I appreciate it when ads look like ads. They don't turn me off unless there are too many of them, are too distracting, or look too much like the text of content. I want them to say something interesting and compelling, maybe help me dream and plan a little, and I want them to have some branding about them -- otherwise they are just so much clutter.

[SEOigloo]

used to love using using The Mining Company (boy, that brings back memories) and what is now known as About.com

Jozian, this is such a prime example! About.com has annoyed me to the point that I've developed a phobia about clicking on any URL that has the word 'about' in it, for fear of being subjected to a page of ads so thick, you can't even see the content any more. They have made me prejudiced against the word 'about'. I'm serious!


Elizabeth, I'd have to say, I really don't even notice adwords ads anymore. Unless there are 20 of them on a page in which case, I say, "What the heck is this?". Text ads don't bother me at all.

Kal,
Okay, good to have you confirm that you are seeing these. You know, I tried to find a way to contact Jennifer about this a week or so ago, but I couldn't easily find a way to do so via SEG. Maybe I just missed her contact link??? Like I've said, my eyes were really having trouble with the previous run of ads and it could have led me not to be able to find the contact link. Now, if this was a business site, that would surely be a worrying statement from a user...but it's a content site, and maybe the folks at SEG would prefer to have people go to their forum rather than ask direct questions of the authors? If you are friends with Jennifer, maybe you could mention this to her? And please, if you do, please tell her what a fan I am of her wonderful writing.

It's good to talk about these things, I think. Without the feedback of users, where would the Usability folks be? It's really important for all of us who develop websites to be aware of how what we are doing is being received and perceived by the public.

Thanks for all of the good replies here!
Miriam

[Jozian]

Lol, Miriam! I'm glad someone else remembers The Mining Company. I actually thought these guys would pull ahead of Yahoo, before Primedia ate them. Google? What's a Google?

One of the great things about the Cre8 forums: Some of the contributors actually have pre-Bubble experience and memory

Inline advertsing and popup links
Is it just me, or do others of you out there read with your mouse? Inline ads are ok with me, but I guess I will have to stop moving my mouse over the text as I read. We could get some good analytics from tracking my mouse iI think - ala a heatmap.

The popping of ads isnt a problem, usually, but some sites have every other word highlighted and have poorly configured rolloff timers/code that sticks the ads up over the text for an inappropriate amount of time. I may soon have to axe a couple of them that use this technique, if they dont do some optimization and UAT.


-Jeff

This post has been edited by Jozian: May 19 2007, 06:07 PM

[iamlost]

I see a general problem of distraction.

Movement, noise, clutter, and hanging scripts are all distractions. Note that I am not singling out ads. There is no set distraction threshold as it varies by individual and mood. This makes distraction a moving target similar to usability except you want less of the former and more of the latter.

There is a growing tendancy to jam the page. Layout is become a moving van loading puzzle rather than display for comprehension. The problem with clutter is that things are easy to overlook - and so attention grabbers proliferate viewer distraction: 'look at me', 'no, no, over here'. I've seen this with navigation, on-site topic referral lists, blog rolls, schedule lists, etc. And ads of course.

It is silly for several reasons:
1. increased distraction increases bounce rate and decreases returns.

2. too many of anything causes the eye to skim on by.
This is why a selling art gallery often has far more blank space around artworks than a museum. Focus. On each piece individually.

3. well targeted content has too few keywords to attract multiple well converting contextual ad sets. Too many off-topic ads actually stand out by virtue of their inappropriateness: instant spam feel.

4. if you irritate people enough they turn off javascript, java, etc. and/or install an ad-blocker. They may still come but they'll never buy what they no longer see.

Enough. If you need more reasons to minimise distraction you won't bother. Note: this comment aimed at the world at large, not anyone here.

The answer is simple really. Good design. Integrated layout: navigation, content, ads, etc. thought of as a whole rather than boxes to stuff into space available. White space. Human scale.

So add another page. Or ten. It's cheap. It's easy. No additional newsprint required. It's the web. This is 2007. Sigh.

[tam]

I find moving ads really off putting. Actually those twitching smilies on the left of the reply box have the same effect. When you see movement in the corner of your eye you eye goes to it and you loose your spot on the page.

Even more annoying are the ads with sound. Making me jump because I've left my speakers on and accidently moved my mouse over an ad will not endear me to your site

I have ads, it's a 127x127 box, top right column. To the eye, it's priorty is below content because thats where I think ads should come in the peaking order. We generate plenty of revenue though because the ads are very very targeted.

Honestly, if I'm reading about webdesign the odds of me clicking an ad for insurance are pretty low. I think all the flashyness is just a way of compensating for the less specific targeting you get from adsense etc. rather than making the deals yourself.

Maybe my contents too niche but I've never been that impressed with the ads adsense generates. To me putting an ad of your site tends to indicate some endorsement to visitors even if you clearly label it as advertising. Get the wrong ads and that can be just as damaging as the irritation value.

Tam

[SEOigloo]

Get the wrong ads and that can be just as damaging as the irritation value.

You seriously have to keep on top of Adsense. We run a birdwatching website and the ads that show up on the California Quail page are almost all about eating quail. Not the message we want to send out AT ALL!

Good points, Tam.
Miriam

[EGOL]

We run a birdwatching website and the ads that show up on the California Quail page are almost all about eating quail.

lol... that is funny

I have some pages that feature geographic areas such as cities... I get ads for dating services... I sure don't want them on my site.

I think that the pages that get these well targeted but inappropriate ads are great pages for affiliate programs that we hand pick ourselves.

[robertclough]

Wow, this is a fantastic thread! Thank you Miriam for starting it and thanks to everyone for the feedback. I'll do my best to address all comments.

The ad in question isn't AdSense but an MSN ad. They are a direct advertiser. We have a contract that covers what they can show and animated / flash ads fall within that realm. They also can change ads throughout the campaign which they do to test different messages.

Ammon Said:

"If you use Firefox, grab yourself the ad-block extension, enabling you to strip out the intrusions and allowing you to continue to read the good content of sites, and continue to be an advocate of good sites you'd otherwise abandon."

Thank you Ammon for excellent advice! I'd encourage everyone who is ad-adverse to grab the plug-in to block the ads. I think our advertisers would agree with me that showing ads to visitors who don't want to see them doesn't benefit anyone.

Ideally I'd like to provide everyone with the option of a completely ad-free version. But, advertising is how we generate revenue to keep myself, Jennifer and Linda employed so an ad-free version poses some challenges. Namely, how to provide users with the experience they want without going out of business. Would a subscription model be the answer? I don't know so I'd love to hear more feedback on what would be a good approach.

Miriam Said:

"You know, I tried to find a way to contact Jennifer about this a week or so ago, but I couldn't easily find a way to do so via SEG."

Wow, did I drop the ball. That is totally my fault and I apologize. Somewhere along the line I updated Jennifer's profile and didn't provide a clear way to email. I'm off to fix that now.

[cvos]

Robert - I know you need to make money, but serving the same ads to a highly web literate audience isn't such a good idea. Your audience sees advertisements all day long and is immune to them. Creating more ads just makes it worse. seochat is a good example of a site that is not worth the pain of adhopping to read.

I'm sorry that i dont have any solution to these problems - the company that does solve this problem will get a high readership from SEO's.

[SEOigloo]

Hi Robert,
It's really good of you to take the time to respond, and so good that this thread may actually help all the folks at SEG. Your content is just excellent.

I guess the summary here is that SEG needs to show ads
-but-
a large portion of the readership will never click on them
-so-
we can use plugins such as the FF one to block them
-and-
Robert is going to add Jennifer's contact info to her profile.

Sounds good to me, and I really appreciate that Robert came here to address some of these concerns!
Miriam

[kulpreet_singh]

Because of Firefox and the Adblock Pro extension, I have become so accustomed to no ads that when I ever have to visit a site in IE7 and see the ads, I leave as quickly as possible.. hehe..

[A.N.Onym]

Perhaps, a subscription-based model is the answer? Selling content in one way or another may be, too.

[tam]

I've seen some sites that offer the option of buying a subscription to see an ad free version or putting up with the ads. I'm not sure how well that would work with an internet savvy audience though if they're happy to block ads themselves.

Maybe you just need to get more creative and show ads that are so relevent that users want to see and click on them.

We show ads for niche products often from companies that aren't great at promoting themselves so it's sometimes the first time readers will see the product and they'll think cool - that looks niffy I want one of those.

Most of the companies we approach come from things that people have recommended on our associated forum and got a positive response.

We also offer incentives like a discount or x amount going to charity so people click through our ads not elsewheres.

I guess it's harder for SEO because there is so much compeition.

Tam