What’s a good proportion of Advertisement on a web page?

Midday website has spanning ads that do not go away!!

Off late I am coming across pages of different news websites and others that have more advertising per page than actual content. Now we all know that everyone has to make a buck or two but at what cost? Attached is a screenshot from http://www.mid-day.com/. I understand the fact that ads need to be there to support their infrastructure, but things that span over actual content blocking it is a bog no no. Could not get a screenshot without the spanning advertisement in the center, as it wont go away.

But thats not all. Then there are ads that are purely unworked on. Specially through google’s adsense. These are ads that look like no one has spent anytime on them. C’mon guys, you would not do that to television, then why the web? Probably because Google has little or no quality check in place to control that, after all they are making money and care very little.

This screen grab is from NDTV.com, a popular news portal. See the horizontal banner ad running in a box on the right side column.

It’s been a decade to full fledged internet advertising and banners, and I think it’s time that people actually spent time and money on them rather than copying and pasting a poor quality image and adding text from powerpoint.

Now some may argue that if you do put ads, things are bound to get cluttered. Not necessarily, just see Exhibit A: Wired.com

Wired.com homepage, smart balance and placement of ads work towards building the look of the page. Quality of ads matter as well.

Wired.com homepage, smart balance and placement of ads work towards building the look of the page. Quality of ads matter as well.

Save the TIger Campaign

It seems there is a Campaign on supported by our cricketers and a popular mobile company to save the Tigers that are left in India. An alarming 1411. The Campaign in it’s true ad world way shows a tiger cub waiting for his / her mother followed by a gun shot echoing through the forest. Nice, very touching, works to get ones attention to the tigers. But is that where we want the attention to go to?

No

  1. We need this bulk of attention to be diverted to those who poach tigers, those who buy their byproducts and those who flaunt tiger skins in their homes, including the fake ones. Logic says, if you buy the fake one, you definitely long for the original.
  2. The bulk of the problem is their diminishing habitat. It’s a large territorial cat that needs lots of wild space. A stringent control of Human population within the country would surely help reverse effects in the long run. Maybe it’s already too late for the tiger, but the Rhinos and the Ghariyals are going to go soon.

Let’s put down some ideas wherein we can come up with some innovative and plausible solution that would actually help rather than exploiting a lone cub to market ourselves.

Do comment in your ideas. The original video from Youtube is included.