On News and Advertising
There have been many discussions about the state of online publishing. Andy Rutledge argues that digital news is broken. Oliver Reichenstin asks if we should offer “business class” news. Dustin Curtis points out how pathetic online offerings look beside their print equivalents. They’re all correct, and each post makes strong points. I just want to weigh on one final piece…
Why did we let web advertising get so fucking ugly?
Accepting a substitute
There is no iPad app or web app that beat the experience of picking up a glossy magazine, and reading it cover to cover until it’s dog eared and disposed. Fact. There are many iPad apps that come really close. Web sites are further behind than iPad apps, but the Financial Times web-app shows us a way forward that isn’t smothered in 25 tabs, with 3 levels of navigation per page. It is possible, it seems, to deliver a compelling reading experience online. So where does it all go wrong.
Just add adverts
Every time a web-designer mocks up anything approximating their version of a nice news website critics automatically scream “How naive! What about the ads?”. The assumption advertising is some immutable ugly force that has to destroy everything in its path. It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t need to be that way now.
We don’t go through magazines page by page with black markers erasing the adverts or tearing them out like a human Adblock. I believe if magazines had two price points with/without adverts there would be next to no demand for the latter. Good magazines have taste, they curate their adverts like they curate their articles.
Beauty in advertising
Advertising can be beautiful, compelling, remarkable and eye-catching. As a low bar, it can be “inoffensive”. Let’s look at some classic and contemporary magazine advertisements.
Ugliness in advertising
Now let’s see what is deemed acceptable online, it might appear cherry picked, but all of these adverts are from news sites I visited today.
Even the most anti-capitalist of readers wouldn’t be offended by the Ogilvy Apple or BMW adverts. They are clean, attractive, strong. No animation needed. I bet as you scrolled down here you paused to appreciate them. Maria Sharapova, if you’re wondering.
The responsibility
If you’re designing a content driven site, it’s your responsibility choose the adverts you permit. The same principles that stop you accepting porn adverts should stop you ugly flashing misleading ones. If that means abandoning the sacred cows that are banners, leaderboards, and their ilk, don’t be afraid to do so. Someone has to. Instead of leaving 300px gaps in your article for ads, make adverts a feature, a beautiful feature. Reject adverts that aren’t as well designed as your site. At least start by offering the free pixels extra to those willing to design their adverts properly. Something has to give here.
Networks such as The Deck do a great job selecting only appropriate adverts, I only wish they’d use more than the 120×90 square to do so.
Criticizing Naïvety
Reading online often feels like trying to read while drunk. Your eyes are constantly drawn elsewhere, so many links, animations, images, pagination. You’re fighting with a website to let you consume its content. Tools like Readability help massively, but overall this has to change.
Whenever someone offers us a glimpse of a better way to read news or articles online, don’t assume that it’s all a naive designers wet dream. As Paul Graham said, obstacles upstream propagate downstream. If you constantly argue that news can’t change and new designs can’t work, then don’t be surprised when you get left behind.
The reality is that someone is going to publish a news site with advertising that doesn’t look horrible, and it sure as shit won’t be the guy who’s moaning that “everything has to stay the way it is“.
Follow destraynor & contrast on Twitter. If you work with web-apps, check out Intercom. Data for top visual courtesy of Adweek.