LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 6:56 UTC (Tue) by hawk (subscriber, #3195)
In reply to: LWN advertising update by bartman
Parent article: LWN advertising update

I "third" this.

In-text ads makes the text into a minefield where you, if you accidentally point your mouse cursor at the "wrong" word, are interrupted in your reading.

I think the in-text ads are actually worse then having the ad visible in the text from the start (with the text going around the ad). That way it's at least obvious where the ad is and it doesn't really interfere with your reading much.

Now, if subscribers have to opt-in for this extra advertising, I guess it won't necessarily affect me much personally, but the in-text ad implementations I have seen on other sites have been truly frustrating.

I tried enabling it and see how it works in the LWN case, but didn't find any such advertising on the site yet.
I think that the key to having this advertising form work as well as possible (when it comes not to frustrate the reader) is to make the in-text ad words clearly marked (in a way that is not confused with regular clickable links).

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 7:37 UTC (Tue) by IkeTo (subscriber, #2122) [Link]

Indeed, for many sites I won't care in-text ads, because links in those articles are useless, and I just remember to never click or move my mouse to anywhere near any text. But for LWN where useful links are the norm, I think I *really* don't like in-text ads.

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 4, 2007 22:01 UTC (Tue) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (1 responses)

I enabled it as an experiment and there are ads on the site - for example here: http://lwn.net/Articles/247788/

They are clearly marked, but that doesn't make them any less annoying, at least for me, because an accidental mouse movement pops them up.

LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 5, 2007 9:37 UTC (Wed) by hawk (subscriber, #3195) [Link]

I see the extra javascript if I look at the page source, but no words on that page are made into in-text advertisements when I go there.

Either way, I agree, that it's still an annoying form of advertising. I do however think that it's even worse in the cases where the in-text advertised words sort of look like regular links.
Which I take from your comment is not the case.