MousePotatoPower

There are times when I absolutely HATE advertising.  Commercials, ads in magazines and newspapers, online ads, it doesn’t matter, there are always examples of supernatural idiocy.

I followed a reputable link to an article about cooking tips today.  When I arrived at the target website, I was a little disappointed that the article was so “short”.  By the time I got to the 2nd page, I was getting frustrated that I could only read for 30 seconds before having to click to the next page.  On the 3rd page, I gave up reading the article and decided to write a rant on the dumb design of the website.

The layout at RealSimple.com is pleasing.  I like the colors and the navigation.  The only gripe I really have is the amount of content vs. the amount of ads (but it’s a big gripe).

Example of bad layout

RealSimple limits their page to 885 pixels wide, no problem there.   This particular page is 1800 pixels tall.  The size of the article?  400 x 800 pixels.  After squeezing in the article title, an article summary/tagline, a picture, a set of links to print or e-mail the article, and a set of small navigation arrows to move the next/previous page, there’s only enough space for 4 paragraphs of reading material.

So now, we have a 5 page article.  If a visitor has the patience to read through the whole thing, you’re going to give them 20 ad impressions from this one article.

Stretching out 1 article to multiple pages is a great way to keep visitors from getting bored at overly long content and it is an excellent way to squeeze out more ad impressions, but this is ridiculous for a couple of reasons.

the screen space for navigation on each page (including the site search, is ALMOST the same size as the article)
for me (your mileage may vary), the article wasn’t even worth reading all the way through.
the ads take up more screen space than the article.
the ads slow down the page loadtime, frustrating vistors even more.

Bring value to a customer (good content, usable website) before you try to take value from them (ad revenue).