The New Yorker doesn't want you to read...

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?

SA news organisations on Google Trends

There has been a bit of a buzz surrounding Google Trends and their alleged intention to take on Alexa in the tracking, trends and statistics game.I've chatted to Vincent about this and he seemed underwhelmed by the entire concept.I have a different perspective. I am quote excited about the comparative search terms and vague unique visitors per month.From what I can gather, the basic premise is that you can compare what users are searching for and visiting with one website as the focus.The graph below is a comparison of four news websites in South Africa. News24.com, IOL, Mail & Guardian Online and The Times Online.click to enlargeUsing the above graph as an example, Mail & Guardian Online is the focus of the graph and data you are able to see the graph, regions, also visited and also searched for. The key to these comparative graphs is the colours. Note the colours carefully and pay attention because they are important.Mail & Guardian Online is clearly blue and the little button says that the statistics are ranked by/according to Mail & Guardian Online.I can see that people who visited Mail and Guardian Online also visited The Times, searched for vuyo mokoena and South African newspapers.I think this is useful information.What can you do with information like this? It's habitual I think. You can know what your target audiences habits might be. I say might be because there are never any certainties. But we can know with a greater sense of surety (read confusion) than previously. This means targeting. Targeted advertising, targeted content, themes, links, relevance.To me, this is potentially more important than knowing what your users are clicking on in your own site. Why? Because things are different and evolving online, especially in the online news media market. Mail & Guardian Online have implemented a system of cross referencing and external linking. These links directly provide our potential opposition websites with links taking users out of the Mail & Guardian Online in to a different news organisations website. Now if we know which opposition our users prefer, how frequently they visit and what search terms took them in to or out of our websites and our oppositions then the chance exists that the word "opposition" is being used unnecessarily.It could be possible down the line that news is customised by the organisations, users, competitors, advertisers and anyone else in such a way that the flow of information suits each individual in a broader context.

Why is no one talking about mobile?

Mobile, for the last few years, has generally been accepted as the next big thing. But if that is the case why is there no hype, no blogging and why are many of the articles outdated? Is there no one out there who is willing to step in to the role of the punter?I have just read through 50+ Tech feeds that I subscribe to and out of those a single article from ReadWriteWeb focused on mobile.There is no media talk, no thoughts or opinions and no strategies emerging as a result of mobile being the next big thing and I just don't get it.It could be that I am looking in the wrong place, but it seems as though people are either plotting and keeping their secrets close to them or there is no one with a clue. I am interested to get in to this a but further. Let's see where it goes.