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.