Comments on: Once Again, “Old Media” Gets Web Advertising Wrong…

By: michael ritter

michael ritter — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:39:57 +0000

Hear! Hear!

After too many jumping animated ads, tacky teeth, and just too much clutter I reverted to Firefox's Ad Blocker Plus. I really tried surfing with ads enabled but couldn't stand it any longer.

Tasteful ads that are not misleading are not unwelcome, but so much internet advertising is god-awful rubbish.

Web space is critical and designs are so sensitive. Requiring large-scale obtrusive ads will repulse viewers. Your article will be posted on my Facebook.

By: Sumesh

Sumesh — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:45:16 +0000

This has been a long standing problem. With the death of a few small daily papers, you'd expect newspapers to learn quickly and shore up their web assets. But it seems that all they'd do is stick to older, failing models. One of the pluses of the economic depressions is that such failing businesses are wiped out.

I'd written about it once on my blog(see my author link) – it seems a never ending topic.

By: redwall_hp

redwall_hp — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:19:54 +0000

Sadly, it doesn't have to be that way. Part of the problem is that they've become focused on posting record profits rather than simply sustaining the business.

The move to digital publishing is obviously necessary (especially if you consider the costs of printing and distributing physical media), and requires knowledge and skill sets that need to be learned.

The newspaper industry needs to learn how to properly embrace the internet as their new medium, and they need to look back to how things were done a few decades ago. The purpose of a newspaper is not to progressively make more money each year, but to sustain the business, pay the employees' salaries, and deliver a quality product.

By: Heather Flyte

Heather Flyte — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:15:50 +0000

Excellent article and straight on point. The old media advertising dog is on its last legs and it will do anything to slow its demise. Coming from a daily newspaper background I can tell you that bloated advertising staffs and the willful refusal to completely embrace new technology led to the newspaper industry collapse, nothing else.

They're trying to blame small publishers for creating good, targeted content and relevant ads – something newspapers haven't done since the 80s. In the 90s every newspaper wanted to be USA Today, instead of serving their local community.