Althouse: "You can’t blame the web’s decline entirely on the usability nightmare perpetuated by banner ads."

December 3, 2014

"You can’t blame the web’s decline entirely on the usability nightmare perpetuated by banner ads."

"But it’s obvious that banners are not helping. If you switch from an app like Facebook or Instagram to the overcrowded, overstuffed, slow-loading web, you are bound to see a carnival of pop-ups and interstitials — interim ad pages served up before or after your desired content — and scammy come-ons daring you to click. Is it any wonder, really, that this place is dying?"

So writes the NYT's Farhad Manjoo... right under a banner ad.

30 comments:

tim maguire said...: "Dying" seems a bit strong, but I am reluctant to visit a site that covers over the desired text with an ad or asks me to rate the site before I'm even allowed to look at it or pushes an app at me (if I'm on iPad) when I'm just visting this one time. I also avoid YouTube when possible because I have to watch a commercial before I can see the video, even when I'm not sure that's the video I'm looking for.; 12/3/14, 8:31 AM
damikesc said...: Hacker idiots also don't help, but the internet has done a lot to insure it will never hit the level it should have hit because content providers were unable to find a way to include ads that didn't annoy the shit out of everybody.; 12/3/14, 8:31 AM
damikesc said...: "Dying" seems a bit strong, but I am reluctant to visit a site that covers over the desired text with an ad or asks me to rate the site before I'm even allowed to look at it or pushes an app at me (if I'm on iPad) when I'm just visting this one time. I also avoid YouTube when possible because I have to watch a commercial before I can see the video, even when I'm not sure that's the video I'm looking for.

Yeah, it's an annoyance. I don't mind Hulu, though, since it is one ad or so every ten minutes. I can handle that.; 12/3/14, 8:32 AM
Michael K said...: That's what adblock is for. I do hate the autostart videos but I have a back button.; 12/3/14, 8:33 AM
David said...: Trust the Times to be completely up to date on all things web. And to hope hope hope that print is about to make a comeback.; 12/3/14, 8:36 AM
chillblaine said...: A banner ad is easy to ignore. What annoys me is a website that auto-plays a video. Breitbart will auto-play a video advertisement, in a tiny window adjacent to the main story, which is also an auto-play video.; 12/3/14, 8:38 AM
MadisonMan said...: And to hope hope hope that print is about to make a comeback.

I note that the print version of the Times is full of ads.; 12/3/14, 8:44 AM
Bob Ellison said...: "Dying" means his dream of what the web should be is dying.

Nerds always complain of the death of their vehicle. Back in the 90s, it was the commercialization of the web. In the 80s, it was pretty much any commercial use of personal computers.; 12/3/14, 8:50 AM
Rick.T. said...: I'm not a tech rock star but even I know all you have to do is use something like the free Adblock Plus extension on Chrome to make most of this disappear.; 12/3/14, 8:54 AM
Jaq said...: I love the web. It is a far better place than it was before it went commercial. People who want to make it a regulated utility don't remember what living under "The Bell System" was like. Long distance was an indulgence for the rich, and a rare treat for the rest of us. Now the word "long-distance" probably sounds to young people like "buggy whip" does to us.; 12/3/14, 8:58 AM
Jaq said...: I saw a comment the other day claiming the web was better before it became commercial.; 12/3/14, 9:00 AM
AustinRoth said...: Banner ads? Why would anyone surf the web without ad/pop-up/tracking blocking technology, and also Flashblock or an equivalent?; 12/3/14, 9:10 AM
rhhardin said...: adblock and flashblock keep things pretty sane.; 12/3/14, 9:19 AM
Dave Schumann said...: The unspoken assumption here is that what the Web is primarily for is delivering content, rather than shopping and business. (Well really it's primarily for porn and in that regard is thriving); 12/3/14, 9:20 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: I blame the web's decline entirely on u.n.p. by banner ads.

Any son of a bitch that says I don't ought to be ready for an approaching shit-tsunami.

wv: because verncial; 12/3/14, 9:27 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: Every internet ad should be preceded by a 'trigger warning'.

I am Laslo.; 12/3/14, 9:27 AM
Fernandinande said...: Adblock's "Element Hiding Helper" -> No banners, no popups, no wiggly things, no autoplay video. Or at least not more than once.; 12/3/14, 9:50 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: I do drop sites, and don't follow links, to esp. obnoxious sites. But, for the most part, on my PC, with ad blocking, it isn't that much of a problem. I really don't get the autostart videos that much (and don't go back when I find them).

My current problem is the amount of web content that doesn't work very well on my iPad. NRO takes forever to load, and its stories and blogs consistently take down web browsers.And, now I can't comment on Volokh at WaPo. I suspect that these problems involve badly formed HTML (probably using Microsoft extensions), and in the case of NRO, using much too much ad ware (it isn't the text that takes so long to load, but rather all the rest of the junk, including ads, site meters, etc. that is the problem, and the difference between a fast loading site and a slow one).

Still, I am reasonably happy with the trade offs made to get us good content. Advertising drives much of the content on the Internet. It is either put up with that, or get a paper, with all of that media's limitations, including its (usually liberal) biases and being tied to one physical location.; 12/3/14, 10:05 AM
Anonymous said...: I preferred the content and, more importantly, the people on the web before it became commercial. Because it was limited to largely early adopters and .edu addresses, it was aesthetically ugly and not as functional, but conversation was on a much, much higher level.

After the marketers got hold of it - blech. I do enjoy the higher functionality and speeds. Basically I find places the marketers haven't ruined, and stay around until they do.

Click bait is so bad that it is enough to make me curious about the deep web, just to see if things are less foul when Google can't index them.; 12/3/14, 10:15 AM
Original Mike said...: "For one, they have ruined the appearance and usability of the web, covering every available pixel of every page with clunky bits of sponsorship."

That's why you want as big a desktop monitor as possible. On the iPad, I zoom the screen. I rarely notice the ads and never click on one. The autoplay content, whether ads or content (I'm looking at you, ESPN) is annoying, but turning the speaker off is an acceptable strategy.

It would be a dismal, limited world where the only access to the Internet is through Apps. I've seen "the Web is dying, Apps are the future" articles twice now in the last week. Both authors were twenty-somethings.; 12/3/14, 10:18 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Is it any wonder, really, that this place is dying?

To quote Homer Simpson:

The internet? Is that thing still around?; 12/3/14, 10:25 AM
Original Mike said...: I'm trying to imagine an App-only internet. To read the NYT, I need their App. To read WaPo I need their App. To read Althouse, I need her App. How does one browse for things you don't have an App for?; 12/3/14, 10:32 AM
Henry said...: Manjoo, paragraph 4: Instead of banners, many of these apps, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, make money through ads that appear in users’ social feeds, rather than off to the side of the page.

Manjoo, paragraph 7: Behind just about every banner ad is a vast infrastructure designed to track your movements across the web to improve the effectiveness of ads that, according to several studies, most of us never view anyway.

Don't blame the banner ad for this. The banner ad is a piker.; 12/3/14, 11:33 AM
Known Unknown said...: Click-through rates on banner are abysmal. They are basically virtual billboards.

Also, just get f-ing AdBlock for cry eye.; 12/3/14, 11:48 AM
Joe said...: The web's decline?

They guy is trying to make a living so making shit up is par for the course.; 12/3/14, 11:55 AM
T J Sawyer said...: Disable scripting, block flash and you are home free. You don't even need an antivirus program once you remove those two sources of evil!; 12/3/14, 12:36 PM
Christopher said...: NRO takes forever to load, and its stories and blogs consistently take down web browsers

So it's not just me! On some smartphones I've had, I have like 30 seconds before it crashes, and on a slightly underpowered laptop if mine I am constantly getting "script failed to run properly" error messages.; 12/3/14, 12:51 PM
madAsHell said...: I do hate the autostart videos

Breitbart is now using auto-start videos. I use the back button as well.; 12/3/14, 1:20 PM
Anonymous said...: Anything the NYT doesn't know about being a dying medium probably isn't worth knowing.; 12/3/14, 2:09 PM
Andy Krause said...: All pc's have a "host" file. You can block any IP address using this. The web has plenty of sites that will give the entries need to stop of all the ads, movies, junk etc. Nothing to buy you already have a hosts file. An entry looks like this...

0.0.0.0 tracking.clickmeter.com

This would send clickmeter requests to the trash where they belong. You don't read your junk mail do you?; 12/3/14, 10:30 PM