The New Yorker doesn’t want you to read their content. At least, they don’t want you to read the content first. They want to force you to look at an advert smack-bang over the key eye-track position of a story, top left. Then while it’s loading (and the close [x] option isn’t visible) they want you to think “Hmmm, this can’t be happening, can it? An advert over the main body of text.”
They then want you to close the advert and continue reading the story. I don’t think anyone’s content is good enough to overcome this sort of hurdle. Not only will I not click your stupid advert but I will not not read the article, leave the page and not return. Tsk tsk.
Downturns in the economy should be handled slightly better than this. Surely the answer to revenue issues is not to shove unwanted adverts as users who actually do visit your site?
Roger 12:01 pm on July 31, 2009 Permalink
Salon.com has been doing something similar for a few years and it’s bloody annoying (their one covers the whole screen), but they obviously need the revenue badly. At least with Salon you can hit “x” instantly as it loads so it’s only midly annoying (benefit of SA’s slow connections that the ad takes longer to load than you take to hit close…
BeatlesTrivia 1:01 pm on October 31, 2009 Permalink
I hate those type of ads too! They make me do the opposite of what the sites probably want; read their content and ads. I get out of there as quick as I can. I think it’s bad business.