

Your content is distracting users from ads - paolomaffei
http://fi.am/entry/your-content-is-distracting-your-users-from-the-ad/
cached version (thanks to deusexmachina): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=cache:http://fi.am/entry/your-content-is-distracting-your-users-from-the-ad/&#38;cad=h
======
patio11
Demand Media (and other ad-focused sites, but most remarkably their operation)
understand this deep in their bones, which is why their content is to writing
what chicken McNuggets are to chicken.

~~~
jdietrich
The replies to this comment seem to have missed one important point: You or I
might not want to eat a Chicken McNugget, but millions do.

You and I might consider Demand Media-style content to be shit, but there's a
market for it. We might want big, meaty content written with clever words and
insightful conclusions, but the mass of the market wants little snackable
boneless pieces that they don't have to work too hard to digest.

Demand Media understand this. They understand that the Internet is now
predominantly used by people who read at an eighth-grade level, who don't know
how to use browser tabs or ctrl-f, who will go straight for the back button if
presented with big blocks of text. Demand Media seek to produce huge amounts
of content that is _just_ good enough to be the most relevant content for any
given long-tail search term. They do that better than anyone.

Google aren't fools, they aren't being gamed, Demand Media are just creating
content that is the most relevant content for very specific search terms. It's
not of great quality, but it's the best that's available. If you know how to
form a search query then you can find better content most of the time, but
most people have neither the ability nor the inclination. Cheap, convenient,
omnipresent. It's the stuff empires are made of.

Like 99.99% of products in the world, it's not bad, it's just not for you. If
you are strongly opposed to what other people consume, you have three proper
grown-up options. Either take it up with them, satisfy that demand better, or
ignore it. Railing against the people who fulfil that demand is going to get
you nowhere.

~~~
mquander
On the one hand:

 _Demand Media seek to produce huge amounts of content that is just good
enough to be the most relevant content for any given long-tail search term._

On the other hand:

 _If you know how to form a search query then you can find better content most
of the time..._

Which is it, is Demand Media the most relevant content, or is there better
content? If there's better content, then Google is failing users.

I'm pretty sure that there is better content corresponding to every single
piece of information that a Demand writer has ever posted online.

~~~
al_james
Google is failing its users. Google is a machine, its does not have human
intelligence. Google falls for simple SEO techniques, so that the first
results for a query represent those site owners who best play the SEO game.

This is not a dig at Google, indeed its much better than it used to be, its
just that its a machine with defined rules and will therefore fall foul of
tricks (even if the tricks keep changing).

This is why Goole need to be scared of Facebook, as Facebook looks likely to
be the first business to successfully implement a human recommendation level
into search.

~~~
eru
Didn't Yahoo start out with human recommendations?

~~~
muddylemon
> successfully

------
Groxx
Nah, I uninstall crashy apps. And I, for one, never plan on buying anything
they produce: how can you not notice _10 days_ of your application failing to
work, and only notice because you checked ad revenue? Sorta implies where
their focus is, neh?

edit: Maybe this is part of the reason. Ratings from the iStore for the
application in question:

    
    
      *****: 0
      **** : 0
      ***  : 1
      **   : 5
      *    : 9
    

Several other applications have similarly-weighted ratings, reports of
crashing, etc, though a couple are higher. Color me disinterested.

~~~
hoop
Hi Groxx,

I agree with your comment overall; however, I wanted to touch upon the
following quote.

> how can you ... only notice [your app is failing] because you checked ad
> revenue? Sorta implies where their focus is, neh?

In what business is revenue _not_ the primary focus? While I understand the
importance of product quality and customer service, as well as the correlation
between these factors and revenue, a company that's paying more attention to
their app store reviews than their revenue is doing it wrong.

With that being said, the rest of your comment is perfectly valid but I do not
feel that a business should be bashed because they watch their revenue
closely.

~~~
Groxx
My remark wasn't meant to imply that revenue is inherently bad. Simply that
undue _focus_ on revenue often creates sub-par products. There are plenty of
small software shops out there which _need_ revenue to exist, but create
things _for people_ instead of _for profit_.

My gripe is that apparently checking ad revenue every other week is of greater
importance than even checking that the software _works_. Improving people's
lives by providing something useful is _clearly_ further down the importance
list.

And some don't even need revenue - a la Linux / Rails / _many_ open source
projects.

------
jacquesm
This is why there are many websites that split their 20 paragraph articles
over 10 pages, the lower the actual content on a page the bigger the chance of
a click on an ad, and the bigger the total ad inventory.

Conversely, if your content is too compelling _nobody_ will ever click on an
ad.

~~~
hoop
I always assumed this was for usability purposes. In particular, the whole
"most users won't scroll down to see 'below the fold'" rule.

~~~
tjpick
Users do scroll. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html>

From the article: Scrolling beats paging because it's easier for users to
simply keep going down the page than it is to decide whether or not to click
through for the next page

~~~
hoop
I haven't seen this before, thanks!

------
owyn
A former employer (and this is one of the many reasons I don't work there any
more) was well aware of this and took advantage of it all the time. Just to
give one example, their 404 error was a page of ads...

------
justinchen
This concept works great for custom 500 and 404 pages. Put an Adsense for
Search box and make money when you're not able to serve something else.

------
protomyth
It could also be that the user thought, since there was no content but the ad,
that the app had switched to one of those "click the ad before seeing the
story" type things and clicked the only thing available to get the working
data.

Also, what kind of programmer doesn't have checks in data acquisition code to
make sure it is valid and immediately alert someone when it is not?!?

------
lwhi
I think this phenomenon is mainly about UX and IxD. If there's only one route
presented to the user .. many of the users are likely to choose the single
route presented to them.

Perhaps this is a trite point, but I'd argue that it's a good example of how
presentation of advertising should be included as a key part of any UX and IxD
strategy.

------
lhnz
Those people will leave in anger. Why would they ever use his service again?

------
Tichy
Isn't that just the same as all the spammy grabbed domains? Get a good domain
name, put ads on it. I've heard some people make good money with such sites.

------
chr15
This reminds of a problem that many publishers have with Facebook's ad
platform. Users are too engaged with the content to click on the ads.

------
code_duck
That's the click through ratio, but what about the click counts?

------
auxbuss
Server error.

~~~
jarin
Server errors also distract from ads.

~~~
Vivtek
Unless your server-error page has ads on it.

Hmm...

