Greed Moves the World - But There Are Limits
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As I moved through the tens of web pages I read each day, this morning I observed something that is not new, but has slowly crept into many sites. When going to many pages, mostly magazines with paper circulation, the front page has become a full page ad with a timer. Oh sure, you can click to move past it - but why should you have to?
Have you been to any of these sites lately? If not, take in one of the sites like PC Magazine, ComputerWorld, NetworkWorld, or PC World. Not only is the full page ad there to block your progress to the main page, the opening page is at least 50% filled with ads. Small ads, big ads, multiple window ads - these all have started to look like the old Computer Shopper magazine. Remember that big format magazine that was more ads than content? The saving grace back then was that it was easier to look in Computer Shopper for a retailer than any other method, and what content there was, was extremely useful.
Can we say that the content there is truly useful anymore? Well, yes, it is - but there is so much less of it. Anyone who regularly reads there sees that sometimes the content doesn’t change appreciably for 3-4 days. I’m all for research time, but couldn’t staggered articles, so that some new content is there each day, be the better solution?
Back to the ads - do we really need so many to support these sites? Is that not what revenue from the magazine is for? You can speak of paper and ink costs rising all day, but the magazines have gone up tremendously in price - so that should take care of it.
I certainly appreciate the writers who keep us in the know on all these fronts, and certainly think the reporters should be paid well, but there are many other perks to compensate, so the salaries shouldn’t force the need for so many ads - after all, these are not sports personalities!
It should be possible to maintain a magazine site with 33% of the pages devoted to advertisements. If not, just call each site ‘Ad World - featuring the Remnants of (magazine name here)’
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[tags] PC Magazine, ComputerWorld, NetworkWorld, PC World, advertising, Computer Shopper, paper publications [/tags]
2 Comments
Fredrik Nyman
October 2nd, 2007
at 5:53pm
Most trade rags seem to be completely ad-financed these days, and subscriptions are free to “qualified subscribers”. I know I get PC Magazine, ComputerWorld, and NetworkWorld for free.
the oracle
October 3rd, 2007
at 2:56am
Fredrik, that’s true, and so do I. But there are lots of tests showing that after a person is bombarded with so much advertising, they tune it out.
Fewer, better targeted ads are what is needed.