Are ads okay yet?
Posted by Phil Renaud on November 10th, 2005.
Phil Renaud has posted 21 articles.
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How far do online advertisements go to ruining the look of a well-designed website these days?
Not much more than a year ago, popups were ten times the problem that they are now, but there was generally a clear and distinct line brought about by them: If a site had severely obtrusive popups (and worse yet: remember pop-unders?), you could safely categorize it as big-businessy, or more concerned with quick-and-dirty revenue than with viewership and web aesthetics.
Now, it seems the world has turned. Ads are coming to be accepted even in the most elite of circles - even Stylegala’s got google ads. And they’re not the only ones: Google adsense revenue is up 94% in the past 12 months.
But then, where do you draw the line? Do ads deter a user from finding a well-designed site nice looking? Or can they coexist peacefully with the layout itself? Do tabbed-browsing users find it unsettling when they can’t open flash-ad links in new tabs?
I know, there are blocks for every kind of ad, even the minimalist google ones, but that’s entirely beside the point: Can you simply ignore the ads on a site, and still find the site to be aesthetically pleasing, or do you have to take the ads into consideration and view the site as a whole? In this sense, is the aesthetic value of the site decreased by these ads, or are they embraced/accepted enough nowadays to the point where they’re almost expected?
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12 Responses to Are ads okay yet?
“Do tabbed-browsing users find it unsettling when they can’t open flash-ad links in new tabs?”
This is one reason why I dont like flash-ads the other one is that the people think that their flash-ads must blink and have sund(!!!) and thats really annoying
I think ads should be as discreet as possible without effects which are interrupting my process of reading a site…
I am using adblock to block ads which are to annoying and as more such ads I see as more general is my blocklist
–> not so annoying ads are also blocked
greets tobi
I would prefer a website not have adverts at all, and have previously vowed that my website shall remain ad-free for as long as I own it. However, there have been times where I’ve seen adverts so well integrated I’ve barely noticed them at all.
Most people don’t need the revenue that these adverts generate, so why have them? It’s something I don’t understand.
I think perhaps it is leading designers to create sites whose designs do not suffer from the addition of plain text Adwords ads - examples like Asterisk and Whitespace have a basic look to them (white background, 12px text, bold headings) that mean that Adwords can be inserted and still fit broadly into the overall style of the site.
Whether this counts as discreet advertising or pseudo-content, I don’t know.
A List Apart (www.alistapart.com) and
Coudal Partners (www.coudal.com) are good examples of well integrated ads. Google adSense messes up the design, even if it looks like a part of the design itself, thats my opinion.
I’m not really bothered by ads if they’re simple text, like the google ones.
Adverts on lyric sites and such things annoy me, especially since pop-ups open in a new tab in my firefox, the focus then switching to it, and I can’t be bothered to try and change the settings to stop it :(
I’d like to see instances where advertising was part of the design of a site, that would be interesting.
I for one am someone who needs the ad revenue, and while I would never put ads on my personal site (that’s just dumb), I will put them on my own gallery. I think it’s a lot better than asking people to donate, since clicking ads doesn’t cost my visitors anything! I think that clever ad integration is also worth noticing, and a website shouldn’t be penalized for having ads integrated with the design.
There are definitely two types of ads - intrusive and passive. Intrusive ads (popups/moving flash ads etc) annoy me as I struggle to read the content but I can handle ads that simply fit into the site’s design. I do like to be told if they are ads though.
While I prefer sites w/o ads, especially blogs, Advertising isn’t generally something that is supposed to “fit in” to a design. Almost by definition an ad is supposed to stick out and be noticed.
However, having said that, some sites do a much better job of controlling how they blend.
I like how Daring Fireball incoporates ads. Granted, the site has plenty of whitespace but you know the ads are ads and they aren’t obtrusive.
More and more ads are becomming a type of content rather than being intrusive. With the development of contextual ads, websites that integrate these types of advertisements into their sites may actually be benefiting their users.
After all, if contextual ads were really that bad, wouldn’t we see users losing sight of the ads as they learn to to block them out?
I tend to agree w/ Mark. The google content targeting ads aren’t necessarily a bad thing. They’re text based (not too obtrusive), and are advertising based on the content you’re currently looking at.
I cant stand ads.
Ads are better than ok, they make content free for the masses and work to democratize information.
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