Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
Advertisements in news websites
Have you ever wondered how the sites would be without the ads?
Yea, i know some sites run on the money generated from ads. No problem. That is when the site is their main business. But what about the sites which are complimentary to their main business? That is they make the money through some other means, and use the sites to promote their main business? In that case their site itself becomes an ad for their main business!
I am taking about sites of news channels be it TV or newspaper. Their channel/newspaper is their main business- they sell ad slots and earn money to run their business. They also have websites to promote their channels and also as part of their “inclusive journalism”
What’s the prime purpose of the news channels? as they say “to treat news as sacred” “to give the viewer a voice and never talk down”
How about having
a little sensibility in the ad policy of the site?
I agree there are a few of the websites, which are better than the rest. I am talking about the others.
I dont mind watching an ad when I am reading Hollywood gossip stories- but not when I am trying to find the details of the terrorist bomb explosion in Mumbai. I don’t want to be interrupted by ads which make me click on the close button.
But sadly, if you see the present channel websites- most of them are a mess. Even in their home pages they have a lot of insensible ads. The users have to struggle through the ads to find what they are looking for. Forget the user centered design- they don’t even have an idea what it is. How many times have you found yourself staring at some nonsense ad, when you wanted to read some important news?
If you are a news channel, and is considering allocating adspace in your site, just keep in mind these simple rules. These are just the must haves.
1. do not allocate more than 10% of screen real estate for ads in the homepage. in the subsequent pages maybe the ads can be up to 15-20%.
2. Clearly demarcate the ads and you in house promos from the news.
3. No animation in ads, please.
4. Never never cover the data with ads.
If these websites were your news papers, they would be full of large holes with barely enough content material to hold these gaps together.
See for yourself - Here is a study of a few news channel websites and the ad content in them.
Comparison of websites and their ad content
Lets start with BBC, needless to say, the best of the lot. No ads at all
BBC
Times of India’s web site is much better than their newpaper, very less ads.
Times of India
See the hindu site.
The hindu
NDTV
Indian Express
Aajtak, with a lot of “blackspace”
Aajtak
And finally the worst of the lot
CNN IBN
A long way to go, guys !
UPDATE :
CNN IBN changed their website. See here. Little better now, is this what they call CNN IBN Impact ? 
August 11th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
M. Kulkarni said:
That was a good review of sites.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
dinsan said:
nice idea. but I take it in this way, the original cost of a printed newspaper is 2 or 3 times more than what we actually pay. Ads make it cheaper and accessible to everyone. Unlike other websites, news portals should be updated in every minute, they need a good infrastructure backbone. They need a 24/7 team behind it and they need to “buy” the content from news agencies also. The website is accessible free of cost.
However, I am against those who simply run behind the ads and no content. ( if u look at my site u should see some ads lol… yea but I added them 2 weeks back after blogging more than 1 1/2 years
August 21st, 2007 at 12:36 am
Harikrishnan said:
Thanks for the comment, Dinsan.
First off, I am not against ads. i used to earn a living by doing ads.. and i still do ads. My point is ads should be limited and properly demarcated. like NDTV, or hindu in my example.
I use google ads in some other sites i own/run. But i would never put the ads in between the contents and actually fool people to click it.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:55 am
Dave Dinmore said:
Thanks, Harikrishnan. I have finally had enough of news sites with invasive advertising. I have been reading Yahoo News for years and will now switch to BBC. Yahoo uses several insidious tactics: They lodge a large 4″x4″ advertisement in the text so that you can not avoid it and have to read around it. I held up a floppy disc or recipe card over it while I was reading the news. I could not scroll left or right far enough to cover the advertisements on each side of the text, too, so I had to drape a sock over it. Lately, they are using moving graphics, too, which is even more distracting. I think one answer to this problem may be to offer readers a pay-version of the news site, without advertisements.
July 13th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Keswar said:
I agree with you