

The New Yorker looking at better ads - JCB_K
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/03/web-reading-bye-bye-belly-fat.html

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gyardley
_But there is an ever-growing amount of good writing online, much of which
suffers from its proximity to these low-rent neighbors._

I'm not entirely sure why good writing 'suffers more' from proximity to a
direct-marketing campaign - acai berries, belly fat, whatever - than it would
from, say, an ad for a Ford Focus or The King's Speech. Both offer an
equivalent amount of visual distraction.

The author here doesn't understand that online advertising is fairly efficient
- the 'get four auto insurance quotes' advertisements show up because more-
familiar brand advertisements simply don't work well in those spots. People
reading good writing online aren't particularly valuable to advertisers, so
they get to see no-risk-to-the-advertiser cost-per-acquisition advertisements.
Got to try and monetize somehow.

I suspect there's a certain bit of class snobbery here - the reader is engaged
in something _literary_ , so how dare he be subjected to an ad so déclassé, it
belongs on a gossip site? Obviously he, a refined soul, deserves more tasteful
commercial distractions!

There are two solutions here. The reader _could_ be extensively and thoroughly
tracked, so we know enough about him to show him an ad for that off-Broadway
adaption of Silas Marner he's been jonesing for. But that approach is
currently under attack from all parties - and besides, when people are
tracked, the ads best suited for them are often less sophisticated than they'd
anticipate.

I prefer the more direct solution: if you don't like the ads, pay for the
content through some other means, and eliminate the need for advertising
altogether.

~~~
haribilalic
_I'm not entirely sure why good writing 'suffers more' from proximity to a
direct-marketing campaign - acai berries, belly fat, whatever - than it would
from, say, an ad for a Ford Focus or The King's Speech. Both offer an
equivalent amount of visual distraction._

It's not about visual distraction, it's about reputation and the reputation-
by-assocation of the publication on who's website the ads appear. I trust car
manufacturers and movie studios a lot more than the people behind those acai
berry and belly fat ads, which to me, are as bad as spam about Viagra and
Cialis.

~~~
gyardley
According to the article, it's about 'protecting visual space for reading'.
But now that I see this comment's been upvoted, I'm curious - if good writing
does in fact 'suffer' when placed beside an advertisement you don't trust, why
is that, and how exactly does the writing suffer?

You'd be capable of identifying good writing without any advertising alongside
it. But when the exact same article is placed beside an acai berry ad, somehow
the experience is worse. How come? Does having the acai berry ad there make
you feel foolish somehow? Do you not want to be associated with it? Are you
worried that someone might see you reading something alongside an acai berry
ad? When you read the content, are you thinking of acai berries? These
thoughts never enter my mind, but I could be atypical. Perhaps you're simply
less likely to start the article, having seen the acai berries first?

If most people out there can't evaluate content independent of the advertising
that supports it, that's got interesting implications for the online ad
industry. Perhaps quality brands should start charging sites for the privilege
of displaying their reputation-enhancing banners.

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mquander
I don't think that the set of people who

A) want to read long form writing online, rather than in print,

B) but they don't use RSS, they don't use Readability, they're not using a
mobile app, and they use the default website layout instead of the print
stylesheets

C) and they're irritated or turned off by weird ads,

D) but they don't use an ad blocker

is a very large set, and I don't think it's growing any bigger.

~~~
grantheaslip
I'm almost certain this is the majority of the people who read the New Yorker
online. Among the HN crowd, you might be right (though I doubt it), but
regular people just aren't aware of almost anything you listed.

It might be hard to believe, but there are millions of intelligent people out
there who read long-form writing online but have almost no idea that websites
are mutable. There's nothing wrong with that--they just have different
priorities.

~~~
mquander
That does seem surprising to me. I can pretty much divide up my social circle
into people who don't read, people who have print subscriptions to stuff like
the New Yorker and Harper's and think that the Internet is mostly good for
shopping, and people who have every writer in the universe in their RSS feed
and never leave Google Reader.

~~~
grantheaslip
I can see a lot of the same people in my social circle as well, but I'm not
sure they're representative of the norm. I think as geeks who know what HTML
and CSS are, own approximately a dozen devices that can access the web in some
capacity, and don't think that Greasemonkey is a brand of motor oil or
something, we have a tendency to form an everyone-must-be-just-like-me myopia.
And even worse, we tend to (even subconsciously) assume that people who, say,
don't know what the difference between a browser and Google must to be too
stupid to read long-form content online. They're the ones reading MSN.

I'm not accusing you of doing this personally, it's just a recurring
deficiency I see in tech communities (and I'm certainly not immune to it).

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jonkelly
I'm reminded of the punchline of the old econ joke "we've already established
what kind of woman you are, now we're just haggling over price." We always
have to remember in web publishing, ads _are_ content. Your users _will_ judge
you based on the ads you display (if they are not in the tiny minority who
block them). And, rightfully so. Do you think Vogue would allow some crappy ad
from T.J. Maxx between LV and Prada? Never. That (and their readership who
pour over the ads to see what's hot) is why they have sky-high CPMs. It can be
done online, too.

------
dmethvin
Today I learned there is a whole universe of bizarre ads on web pages that I
have never seen, thanks to AdBlock. Seriously, I had no knowledge of the ads
described in this article.

