Comments on: Ads Are Here To Stay: Planning For Ad Placement

By: singh

singh — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

this is an incredible peice, and very sufficly authored. From my point of view, ad users, the people who clik the ads come first as far as the ddesifning is concered, and then he design team, nd thirdly the sales team. But it is always the sales tema that gets the first apple. It is the case in each publishing venture. Anyway thank you for your points. Singh http://www.searchbox.mobi

By: Harry

Harry — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Pop-up blocking has now been generally accepted as a legitimate thing, and advertisers are wising up to not using them (What's the point? apparently 50-60% of web users now use ad blocking). Ad blocking though, seems to be enjoying a quiet rise. There are lots of very easy to use fire and forget ad blockers / hiders. E.g. Mozilla (& Firefox) offer adblock and bannerblind extentions; Zone alarm and norton security offer similar features, and even without installing any software users can block ads by configuring their hosts file or by downloading and using a custom CSS. http://www.ux-design.net/degoogling.php In an article Ive just written on ad hiding using custom CSS (sorry shameless plug above), Ive shown how easy it is to get carried away and start seriously changing your web experience. Like hiding googles logo as well as its advertising. Or hiding all the excess cruft that you dont ever use on your favourite sites (like register here boxes or whatever). In a way, pop-up blocking became acceptable because it was different to other kinds of adverts and required a different technique to block. Microsoft could safely integrate it into IE without worrying that it will be mis-used by the world and ruin internet advertising revenues for everyone. But ad blocking in the body of a page lumps the ok stuff (like targeted google adwords in subtle hues) together with the bad stuff (animated gifs and flash banners etc). This sends advertisers a difficult message. You can envisage a continued battle between advertisers and end users where the advertisers continually change hosts and ad sizes to get around the blocking rules. In an ideal world, it would be great if everyone could rally together and focus on blocking the worst of the culprits (e.g. animated gifs and flash animated banners), giving advertisers a strong message while allowing them to carry on doing well targeted, visually subtle adverts. After all we dont want to put our favourite sites out of business, we just want them to play nice.

By: Harry

Harry — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Whoops – due to a couple of typos that first paragraph didn’t make much sense. It should have read:

“Pop-up blocking has now been generally accepted as a legitimate thing, and advertisers are wising up to not using them (Whats the point? apparently 50-60% of web users now use pop-up blocking). Ad blocking in the page body, though, seems to be enjoying a quiet rise…”

By: Yaniv Nord

Yaniv Nord — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Your insightful article makes one major assumption that may or may not be true.

The premise you are working with is that publishers deliver advertising to readers.

I would argue that the business model of publishers is the other way round: their commodity, what they sell, really, is a readership. The purchaser is the advertiser. The advertiser, after all, is who generally provides the bulk of a publication’s revenue. (This of course assumes that we are not talking about, say, a magazine like the Economist which charges very high subscription premiums). In that sense, then, could one say that the core user group, the core constituent, is the advertiser, and not the reader?

By: alex kirtland

alex kirtland — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Very true. Often times one designs first for the user, then for the ad sales team, which can often be very vocal about their needs, especially since they often have bonuses and such tied to how much they sell, and the more they can offer their clients, the more they sell, the more money they make.

By: grant

grant — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Advertising and the way it is manage within a page is seems to be a bit of a hassle, ( i personally havent had to place many adverts in sites i have made but from an obsovational view i see that intergrated ad work better, for instance iinet.com.au
places there own ads under the header/menu:
these ads are designed for the page and help to compliment the overall design. Yet sites like flashkit.com, have sold out to advertisers and the site has been basically destroyed in a way, yet i think that advertisers and webdesigners should get together and figgure out a bette way to intergrate advertising into a page with out making it so overlly confronting . sorry if this makes no sense and the spelling is a little out im a little pissy at the moment, yet id like to put my point across lol!!!