indefensible asked: I read with interest your recent piece on the varying levels of utility of 'print view' pages on websites. What are your thoughts on the impact that using these pages might have on the economic model of the websites?
In one sense, what makes those pages so much more readable is their lack of advertising. Do we as consumers of content have a responsibility to at least subject ourselves to some advertising as a way of paying for content?
I'm torn on the issue, and and intrigued as to what you might think.
I will preface this by saying that anything I say on this matter comes purely from what I’ve picked up as an interested bystander. I have no professional insight to offer.
If you go to The Atlantic, what do you see? What you don’t see is a barrage of advertising. There are just a couple of ad spots on the entire home page. Go to an article view, still only two ad spots anywhere that matters (there’s one right at the bottom, but you don’t have to see it until you’re done reading). They’re not militant about article pagination, either. It’s one of the most pleasant reading experiences I’ve seen.
The Atlantic made 32 percent of their yearly revenue just from online advertising.
If they can do that, why can’t everyone else? It’s clear to just about anyone that bombarding readers with advertising is not the answer. (I’d like to take this opportunity to extend another “fuck you” to Salon.com.)
I’d say we do have some responsibility to subject ourselves to advertising. It is, after all, just about the only way these people make money. When you buy a newspaper, you agree to a little advertising. When you pay to get past a paywall, you usually agree to a little advertising. Just by visiting say, newsweek.com, you agree to a little advertising. But there’s a breaking point. There’s no reason whatsoever that I should have to be subjected to a full page interstitial — that has audio! — just because I went to Salon’s home page. (And while I was sitting here typing this, with Salon’s homepage in the background, I saw the homepage auto refresh itself and pop up another fucking interstitial. Fuck that.)
Obviously, this online gig is still new ground for publishers and I think they have a way to go in figuring out how to make it profitable without pissing everyone off. Just like the movie industry has to adapt for online, and just like the music industry has to adapt for online, so does the publishing industry. And the sooner they realise that making their websites a pain in the ass to visit isn’t the right way to go about it, the better.
All that said: I don’t skip the ads. I don’t use Adblock — I do use a Flash blocker, but only to blacklist certain sites — and to even get to a printer formatted article, you have to go to the regular article first, with all its ads. And that’s why I will never read anything on Salon (or link to it on the Instapaper homepage), but will happily link to an Atlantic piece, or a New Yorker piece.
That’s my uninformed take on it. Advertising is a necessary evil, and I’m happy to subject myself to it — and I think everyone else should be too. I don’t like it when people use things like Adblock to completely evade advertising, it sends the wrong message. (I daresay it might even make it worse for people that don’t.) If you don’t like the level of advertising on a certain site: either tell them, or don’t visit the site. Severed pageviews and pointed feedback sends a much stronger message than just blocking ads does.
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