
Cisco Not Done With Social Spending - veritas
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3663926
======
pg
My god, is that site cluttered with ads. Looks like a site from 1997. There
was no "print friendly" (i.e. human friendly) link either. I just gave up.

~~~
python_kiss
lol! Here is a nice dissection of ads I did for another site cluttered with
them:

http://shuzak.com/img/Temporary/SpammingUsers.jpg (The ads are highlighted in
green)

An excerpt from an article I wrote on user experience that seems relevant
here:

"One thing I particularly dislike about Web 2.0 startups is their Web 1.0
approach towards displaying advertisements. It shouldn't take an Einstein to
realize where Google ads are appropriate and where they are not...Note that
there is nothing wrong with displaying ads as long as it makes sense to do so.
If you have no ads on your site, you will not make money off of it. If you
have too many ads on your site, nobody is going to click on them.

It is unfortunate that nearly every social network spam's their own users with
unwanted ads. The users are less likely to notice advertisements as the
frequency of ads increases within a site. Even worse, because the users are so
used to seeing ads popup, they might ignore them even when they do make sense
[6]. Usability should always be prioritized over revenues. When a user chooses
to spend 20 minutes of their life on your website, they could be spending that
time anywhere else, but they chose your site. Don't reward their loyalty with
spam [7]."

