Another Look at Online Advertising
Linked by David Adams on Fri 19th Mar 2010 21:07 UTC
OSNews, Generic OSes Online advertising has been a hot topic for the past week or so, with Ars Technica trying out an interesting, somewhat desperate experiment wherein they blocked access to their content for people using Adblock. Of course, if this were to become some kind of movement among publishers, it would probably just spark a technological cat-and-mouse game that would surely be reminiscent of DRM cracking or iPhone jailbreaking. But in their post-mortem, Ars states that it was a worthwhile awareness campaign, and I hope that's true. But I thought it would be a good idea to try to bring the collective OSNews brainpower together and crowdsource the idea of how to raise money for a web site in an age where advertising is increasingly un-viable.
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RE[4]: Silly..
by Brendan on Sun 21st Mar 2010 04:32 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Silly.."
Brendan
Member since:
2005-11-16

Hi,

"How many of them do you remember?


None, since I have the subscriber ad-free version. "

Sorry, I should've guessed.

Is OSNews the only internet site (with adverts) that you see regularly? Perhaps you might remember some adverts you saw on a different internet site? Can I assume you would've said so if you did remember them?

If you visit OSNews every day, and you see an ad for a cleaning product every day for a week on end, you'll remember that brand (subconsciously) the next time you go out to buy a cleaning product.


For free-to-air TV and radio, you're (usually) listening to the advert/s while you wait for the content. For most internet sites you're not waiting for anything and you can skip directly to the content. The advert gets skipped, unread. If the advert is disguised as content then it might be read, but the reaction in this case is more likely to be disgust than an increased chance of purchasing anything.

This has been tested LIKE CRAZY in psychology, and confirmed over and over and over again. This is not some opinion or pseudo-science - it's fact. A simple starting point:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=advertising&hl=en&btnG=...


Pigs do fly. It's a fact. Here's a starting point: "google.com".

See how my "pigs fly" comment doesn't qualify as proof of anything? Maybe the reason I didn't bother to find anything that actually does support my "pigs fly" argument is because I honestly don't believe my own "pigs fly" argument.

Can you find anything to support your "easily ignored adverts aren't ignored" argument? For example, some sort of research that doesn't focus on "much less likely to be ignored" adverts (e.g. the free-to-air TV and radio adverts that people usually listen to while waiting for the content)? Can I assume you aren't willing to spend the time to support your argument because you're not sure that you believe it yourself?

On a broader note: people have this tendency to believe they're special, unique, different.


On a less broad note; if I assumed I was unique my "how many adverts do you remember" test wouldn't have made any sense.

On the home page it takes me less than 2 seconds to scan the headlines and click on any articles I found interesting. In the articles themselves it takes me far less time to find and start reading the content. The adverts on OSNews don't stand out and aren't intrusive; and they're never read (except for today, where I deliberately looked for and read them).

While writing this reply I deliberately looked for the adverts. I found them at the very bottom of the page - reply text box on the left, column of news on the right that extends far below the text box, with 4 adverts below that. I don't scroll down that far while using the text box.

-Brendan

Reply Parent Score: 2