Advertising Overload: A Frank Discussion

We need to talk about advertising. Advertising is essential to the internet. If it wasn't for advertising, publishers wouldn't be able to afford to create the content we enjoy each day. When it's used properly, it creates a symbiotic relationship between the advertisers, publishers, and visitors. But we also know that it can completely destroy a visitor's experience when it's used excessively.

So, Answers.com, it's time for an intervention. We've been talking, and we think you have a problem with advertising. It's gone way too far and it's really starting to affect your readers. I realize that your ad revenue must be through the roof, but at what cost?

Here, let me show you what I'm talking about. In the image below, all the green boxes are covering advertisements. The orange boxes are covering the relevant content that I expected to see when I clicked through to the page.

This page actually kept going, but I had to stop somewhere.

The content not covered by boxes is basically either related articles or user comments. Neither here nor there, really.

Just to be thorough, I decided to add the total area covered by advertisements and compare that to the total area of relevant content. Ads accounted for 2.4 million pixels, while relevant content was 395k pixels. I'm sure we could give or take a few hundred pixels on each, or we could argue about the remaining content, but I think the point is already clear enough: There's a ton of advertising going on here.

As a side note, this was a great opportunity for me to calculate the area of a rectangle. Now I can say I've used geometry in the real world like my teachers always said. It was only 16 years before it came in handy.

Effects on Performance

I opened the article in question using a fresh browser. I watched the browser's loading icon spin for over 60 seconds before it finally stopped, leaving me with only a small fraction of the content I expected. To be clear, 60 seconds on the internet is equivalent to 10 minutes offline. It's like ordering a hamburger, waiting in the drive-thru line for 10 minutes, and then being handed a small order of fries and a bag of kids meal toys.

Once the page was cached I was able to load it in about half the time, which is still pretty significant. Unfortunately, the loading never really stopped. Because three of the ad units were videos, each time a video would finish playing it would pull in a new one. This resulted in choppy scrolling. At some points I couldn't scroll at all because the browser was too busy dealing with the ads.

My CPU had to work overtime just to keep the page running. The CPU fan was running on high continuously until I closed the tab.

Other Effects on User Experience

The page promised a list explaining what former Star Trek actors have been up to since they left the show. But, when readers arrive at the page they only get more teaser content. The default view shows the actor's name and photo, but in order to find out what the actor did after leaving the show, you have to click on the "Next" button. By this point, most users who survived the page loading time are probably thinking, "Ok, fine. I'll play your slideshow game. I've already waited this long. A couple more seconds won't hurt." But, they're about to be disappointed. When they click the next button, the entire page has to load again. Is it going to be worth the wait? Let's see below.

Before Clicking	After Clicking

We clicked next. We waited for the entire page to load again. What did we get after that? One sentence. And that sentence only told us what "we all knew."

(I did find it slightly amusing that the advertisement switched from one car rental company to its competitor.)

The article could have been contained in a single page, but they spread it out over several pages for each actor. I don't even know how many pages there were in total, because I completely ran out of patience after page 5. So, what does a website gain from taking this approach? More pageviews = more advertising revenue.

Answers.com, we're discussing this now because we're your friends and we care about you. It's time to scale back your advertising to a healthy level. Your habit is affecting your readers.