Full screen ads
While visiting the website for a local newspaper, the first thing it displayed was this full screen ad.
Now there are quite a few issues with this.
1. It breaks the flow of the content before you even get a chance to read so much as the page title.
2. It slows down page load times considerably.
3. There is no hint of branding on the page for the website in question.
4. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to visit this site, unless the content is so outstandingly unique and engaging that not visiting it would be an issue in itself.
5. Something which you cannot see from the screenshot below, is the page itself when you click away that advert. It is literally riddled with advertising from top to bottom.
Now roll all of those points above into one and you get a very poor quality experience for visitors to the site, which has the knock on effect of harming your search engine rankings either directly or indirectly through user engagement (or lack of).
While I do not agree with using ad blockers myself, I can certainly understand why others would choose to do so.
Is it time for the SEO and marketing industries to stand up and start giving better advice to businesses, or do you think they are getting good advice, but they are simply ignoring it?
The blind leading the blind..
There are a couple of local newspaper sites that I avoid for this reason. If I see a link pointing to them I ignore it, however interesting the article subject appears. It’s too painful and frustrating an experience.
Oh and I forgot to mention it also includes auto play video ads, ads that move the text around when they appear and disappear and ads that won’t let you see content until you answer a survey… it’s a horrible experience.
Alan Stainer Looks like they’ve got the full set of crass and inappropriate marketing going on ;-)
If you think a full page ad is bad Alan Stainer then what about local newspaper sites that manage to put links on articles that take you to an ad page on a totally different site?
Had that happen to me with my local rag when I clicked on story about a fire and was instead taken to a page about the geegees
Their CMS is screwed so that it sometimes gets the ad links and then puts them on articles. I counted 11 on their home page.
So I complained and mentioned doubleclick. Reply I got in the name of the publisher said he didn’t know what I meant by doubleclick.
Err umm his newspaper is only using it to serve his ads so perhaps he needs to get a grip on th business that he is running
hmmmmm
Ian Dixon nail, head, hit.