Today I read/watched all of the required material for this
week. I’m interested in how well advertising
on the web works, mainly because I know how I personally respond to ads on the
web- which is almost not at all. I
almost never click into ads on the internet unless it is something I’m already
searching for, which is part of why Google’s ad sales strategy has been so
successful. They supply ads that meet
searchers’ needs instead of distracting them from their original goal.
Another interesting aspect of web advertising is similar to
print advertising: how ads affect website design.
This webpage is a pretty good example of what not to do. Ads seem like they're squeezed in wherever they fit, which makes the page confusing and the ads less effective. If the page is so convoluted that viewers stop trafficking the site, advertisers will be much less willing to pay for that space. More ads is not always better. Just as in a newspaper layout, ad placement
is key to a website’s overall design.
Smashing Magazine highlights all these specific factors that go into web
design in light of ad placement, but what I find the most interesting is buried
about halfway through the article. It
notes that one key factor in web design that does not come into play in print
design is when clicking on an ad takes the viewer away from the original
webpage. How do you design a website and
ad space that is successful enough to make the viewer click into the ad but
also come back and finish exploring the original site (perhaps even click into
even more ads)? That’s tricky. Even if you make it so that ads open in a new
window, is the original page interesting enough that the reader will come back
to it and begin browsing again. This
aspect of online advertising means that web designers and content creators
really have to step up their game.
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