Dear Titans of The Online Advertising Landscape,

soupsoup:

Joe, Michael, Ryan, James, Elizabeth, Tim et al.

Please help us luddites. Us lowly consumers of your “free” online content. We don’t claim to know anything about your business, we simply are making observations as the very people you are aiming to market to.

Why, I ask is there such an adversarial relationship between many content providers and their consumers? Is there bitterness because it is so difficult to make a living in this business and the consumers should simply shut up because they’re “getting it for free?”

Wouldn’t it make sense to develop advertising methodologies that consumers actually appreciate? There was a time when pop-up and banner ads were thought by advertisers to be an effective method to reach customers, but we evolved. Is it that difficult to imagine that the reason it’s so hard to make money is because the models currently being used simply don’t work.

Are we supposed to believe Pushdowns and XXL Boxes are going to get consumers excited about the products your advertisers are paying you to promote? I suppose if you can keep getting advertisers to pony up, it doesn’t matter how obtrusive the ads are, but if the content isn’t compelling enough to make up for it, you’re going to have less pageviews to justify anyone paying for them in the first place.

But what do I know, I’m just one of your customers.

I don’t think any of the sites you regularly visit are really going overboard with intrusive spots. Certainly none of my sites. I also don’t think pushdowns/XXLs/etc are nearly as bad as the older intrusive methods (pop ups, splash pages, etc). I think they’re an improvement.

At any rate, the inflection point is the point at which you decline to read because of the ads. And what sites have you stopped reading because the Pushdowns and XXLs were soooooo annoying?

I would also bet that there are sites with spots that are much more intrusive than the ones mentioned above and you read them anyway. Why? Because you want the content. And if the price of a pushdown is too much for you to pay for that content, well that’s an editorial problem.

Also, you have to understand those spots are popular for a reason. They test better with users for both ad recall and user interaction. You may not personally like them, but on the whole they get better results. If you were clicking on those boring, less intrusive 728x90 leaderboards occasionally, there would be no need for Pushdowns and XXLs.

But you’re aren’t.

via soupsoup