NewsDesigner reports that one of the newspaper industry’s responses to sagging ad sales is adscapes.
‘Adscapes’ are the latest look in newspaper advertising. No longer are newspaper ads relegated to squares and rectangles. Today, advertisers can attract attention with a variety of shapes and sizes.
The thread features some designers complaining about the trend but commenter Robert Kruger counters:
Why do you think ad reps find it hard to sell the space they already have? Because newspapers are BORING. These new ads are an attempt to change that, to bring a little STYLE into a space dominated by little people stuck in their little boxes. Newspaper subscriptions aren’t down simply because of the internet, bad writing, and bias, they’ve also gone down because of the rigid aesthetic thought, as shown by the designers kvetching here.
Gary
on 20 Oct 06I don’t think anyone is reading their newspaper and going “You know, what this paper needs is MORE obstrusive and annoying advertising!”
The only people who think a lack of advertising screaming at you is “boring” are ad executives.
Percy
on 20 Oct 06This is something that I’ve noticed with newspapers in India as well. Some layouts can make an article hard to read or just plain annoying. Also, because of the way certain layouts are used (colours & photos) you can’t make out whether the article is a news item or an ad.
Then, there are the highlight features or special features or whatever-they-call-it which are paid for by the advertisers and are disguised as news items with the fine print hidden where most people wouldn’t care to look.
Sigh.
Dave Rau
on 20 Oct 06The Hummer ad is disgusting. UGLY!
JF
on 20 Oct 06I like this. Change is good. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Justin perkins
on 20 Oct 06I would be annoyed if I was trying to read an article that quickly narrowed from normal words-per-line to 5, then 4, then 3, then 2, then 1. Then repeated over and over again for each column.
Intrusive advertising and Hummers are stupid ideas.
Peter Orosz
on 20 Oct 06These ads look just like pages from Joseph Pulitzer’s “New York World”. Slate’s Jack Shafer wrote about it last September:
http://www.slate.com/id/2126420/
revan
on 20 Oct 06I think that this design is too large
Erik
on 20 Oct 06I was reading a novel this morning and realized that an advertising opportunity was going unused. Page after page, chapter after chapter, nothing but text. Novels are BORING. It’s past time we saw a little STYLE in a space dominated by little novelists stuck in their little boxes.
Brandon
on 20 Oct 06To me, this whole idea symbolizes old media and old advertising. Ad sales are sagging, so we need to integrate the ads into the content – THEN it will be better. Woohoo, a round of drinks for everyone!
Seriously, ad sales are plummeting because the readership is sinking. Old media addresses the wrong issue. They need to focus on developing ways to deliver relevant content in a faster way and build around that.
I don’t read the newspaper because its inconvenient compared to getting my news on the net. I can get up to the minute news so why would I want to buy yesterday’s news AND get assaulted with ads for doing so?
Seriously, most people try to avoid ads. One study even said people would accept a lower standard of living to live in a society without advertising.
All that being said, sure newspaper ads could be better, but that isn’t going to increase ad sales. Sales increase ad buying, and to increase those sales, the paper needs to find a way to grab more eyeballs.
August
on 20 Oct 06I don’t think “faster” is going to do much for newspapers. One of the reasons I continue to get news from the Globe and Mail and the New York Times is because of things like “well-written” and “sources that are fact-checked” and things like that. Newspapers are never going to compete with “faster”, and they shouldn’t even try. They need to be better.
Information glut is already far too big a problem. Pushing newspapers into a position where all they’re going to do is add to that is just plain stupid. Newspapers don’t need to get faster at what they do, they need to attract and maintain higher quality writers, reporters, and editors. Even if they become a kind of “daily magazine”, that’s fine. It’s a far better solution, imho, then turning them into a paper version of yet another pointless RSS feed.
Michal Migurski
on 20 Oct 06“Why do you think ad reps find it hard to sell the space they already have? Because newspapers are BORING.”
Disagree.
Craigslist’s visual design is boring, too, but it’s eating classified ad sections for lunch in city after city. Why? Because Craigslist is event-driven while newspapers are polling-driven. It’s not about visual style, it’s about immediacy of response. With CL, I can post a for-sale ad in the morning, get replies within a few hours, and finish the transaction in the afternoon. It’s perfectly matched to the daily cycle of a computer/desk worker and untouchable by daily papers.
I think there’s a similar dynamic with the corporate ads above – on the web, clicking an ad gets me immediate information about something that catches my eye and a link I can stash for later, while that silhouetted symphony ad on the page above requires me to clutter my biologically-limited short-term memory with “Nashville Symphony Ticket Sales.” My ability to hold information and act on it later has been ravaged by RSS and Youtube, so it’s just not going to work. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Ryan Feeley
on 20 Oct 06Let’s not argue about aesthetics when the more important question is the ethical one. This blurring of content and sponsorship is bad bad bad.
The Preamble to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics states:
Splashman
on 20 Oct 06Jason, I know you don’t mean that as bluntly as you state it. Having everyone walk the streets dressed only in orange-and-purple-polka-dot cowboy hats would be a change—but I doubt many would call that good.
Questioning conventions is good. Exploring options is good. Experimenting is good. But I don’t suppose 37s would change Backpack’s UI just for the sake of change. Er, would they?
Yes, ads pay the bills at newspapers. But people don’t buy newspapers for the ads. What screams to me about these “adscapes” is that ads are by far the most compelling content on the page. Perhaps the Super Bowl can get away with that model, but a newspaper with declining readership? I look at these mockups and think: “The people that make this thing are primarily concerned about their ads, not about me, the reader.” And then I try mightily to suppress the gag reflex.
I am not a fan of ad-based revenue models. The immediate goal of any ad is to attract eyeballs (and/or ears), because you can’t influence anyone (the ultimate goal) without that first step. And to achieve that, an ad must distract the viewer/listener from their goal (consuming content). The implied contract between buyer and seller is: “I give you something you want, you give me something I want.” Ads are at cross-purposes to one side of that contract.
If ads must be present, Google’s got it right: visually uninteresting text-based ads that don’t distract from the content, but are handy if the reader is interested. The Deck isn’t too bad, either.
Brandon
on 20 Oct 06I agree that better content/writers etc. would help the newspaper a lot.
For some, aged information is perfectly fine. For me, I like to know whats going on RIGHT NOW. I suppose the question they haven’t been able to answer is why someone should buy a newspaper. Years ago, the answer was easy; thats where you caught up on events. There are tons of places to get that info now, so they need to find a way to differentiate. Maybe better writing and content is the answer.
Splashman
on 20 Oct 06Oh, and just so it’s clear, I’m not one of those “I don’t want ads and I want everything to be free” whiners. I prefer paying as I go for what I want. And if that means micro-payments or subscriptions, so be it. When something is free it is valued less.
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Oct 06I like to know whats going on RIGHT NOW
Sometimes I like that, but most of the time I’d rather have somebody a couple hours later say, “this is what it looked at right at the moment, but now that we actually took the time to figure out what we were seeing, it’s clear that what we thought was X was in fact Y.” Which is what most serious news seems to do these days. I’d rather see that once than have to sift through a hundred million Chicken Littles trying to tell me what’s going on RIGHT NOW when they clearly don’t understand it themselves.
August
on 20 Oct 06That last by Anonymous Coward was me. For some reason SvN doesn’t remember my info anymore.
Joe Ruby
on 20 Oct 06The new ads definitely stand out. When I read a newspaper with typical ads, they’re invisible to me. Ads are a vital revenue source to newspapers (and a great many websites), plus they’re often for things I might be interested in.
As for Hummer, if somebody gave me one and paid for the gas, I’d love to have one! Run over all the Priuses…:P
warren
on 20 Oct 06i wonder what you brilliant designer web 2.0 people consider to be “boring”. is it USA Today pablum that consists of regurgitated white house press briefings that you don’t like, or are you the kind of people who can’t stand to watch black and white movies because they’re “boring”?
Mrad
on 20 Oct 06I like the spirit, but the above examples are too much. I equate these to those horrible banners that move across the webpage you’re trying to read. Ads should have some boundries. There’s a point where content on a page becomes unreadable due to the overload of advertising.
Newspapers could start looking like a NASCAR driver’s jacket. Ugh.
Don Wilson
on 20 Oct 06Side note—congrats on the Apple video on you guys.
Don Schenck
on 20 Oct 06Not sure it’s the solution to the sagging sales problem, but I DO like it.
Sure beats New York Times grayness.
Don Wilson
on 20 Oct 06I love the ads that are relative to the page’s content, but not the full page ads that tries to look like the rest of the article. Coolness is good, trying to fool me is bad.
George
on 20 Oct 06I find this article a little strange. The brilliance in these ads isn’t that they make the pages more interesting or any of that jazz. It’s that you can’t filter them out as you scan the pages, as easily as you can the neat-box style ads.
In that sense, these are just the paper equivalent of pop-ups and Flash animations that crowd over and around the text, screaming “LOOK AT ME! OVER HERE! I’M TOTALLY DISRUPTING WHAT YOU CAME HERE FOR IN ORDER TO ADVERTISE TO YOU!” It’s a style of advertising that, online, has been universally rejected and reviled.
So to loop back, I find it a little strange – both that you would be celebrating it here, or that newspapers would believe that it will go down well with their ever-shrinking readership.
Brandon
on 20 Oct 06I think that the trimming of the fat that is happening at newspapers across the country is a good thing.
Has anyone ever calculated what a newspaper would cost, without ads? If it could be reasonable, I would think that would be of interest to people. However, once it worked, the greedy execs would fire up ad sales again and screw it up.
Alex
on 20 Oct 06What? This comment is ridiculous. Why not be creative with relevant content (e.g., images relating to articles, charts, graphs, etc) rather than making the huge obnoxious ads the focus?
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Oct 06Sorry about that:
What? This comment is ridiculous. Why not be creative with relevant content (e.g., images relating to articles, charts, graphs, etc) rather than making the huge obnoxious ads the focus?
Tamim
on 21 Oct 06Advertising will always try to get attention. Besides that. Here is an illustration guy you will like:
http://www.galerie-beckers.de/display.php?cat=exhibits&id=30&mode=thumbs
Hubris Sonic
on 21 Oct 06Because newspapers are BORING .
whomever said that, is an idiot.
ceedee
on 21 Oct 06I recall that while working for a local newspaper some 20 years ago, being told by the Editor that the “copy is the stuff we write to go around the adverts”. Hardly surprising that the bean-counters are now demanding the advertising ‘creatives’ apply themselves to the anaemic fatted calf?
Andras
on 21 Oct 06This type of advertising effectively prevents readers from doing what they bought the newspaper for: read articles.
If ad reps insist on adding such ugly-assed advertising, soon they will find that noone is going to buy their shitty paper—why pay money to view ads?
I know that ads are a necessary evil but those that influence article readability is where I draw the line.
Anonymous Coward
on 21 Oct 06This type of advertising effectively prevents readers from doing what they bought the newspaper for: read articles.
OVERREACTION ALERT: It doesn’t prevent anyone from reading anything. If you want to make an argument that it makes it more difficult or inconvenient then fine, but when you say prevent you’re just wrong.
Splashman
on 21 Oct 06ANNOYING NITPICKER ALERT : Parsing words is a good way to avoid addressing the issue at hand.
Tory
on 22 Oct 06I like it, they look really effective.
Flipper
on 22 Oct 06I doubt we can forecast the future of a newspaper based on their ad space design. Dig through a periodicals collection and you’ll see how traditional media has had to re-invent itself many times over (albeit less spastically than the bug-like hyper-metabolism of the Web).
It would be helpful, however, to know the impact on the paper’s meat-n-potatoes content. Recall the doomsayers’ cries when USA Today appeared? They seemed to displace copy content with large images and (heaven forbid!) graphics, yet they found their audience and share the rack with the Washington Post and the Times.
That said, I read the paper for the quality of their unique content (generally more thoughtful than the just-add-water-news of online pure-plays) and the local perspective they provide, not the ads. If ads like this are replacing column space that would have gone to useful content, then shame on them but I doubt readers will see it as interfering with the “experience” of the paper just as I doubt that many will buy the paper because of it.
Alex Mingoi
on 22 Oct 06“Newspaper subscriptions aren’t down simply because of the internet, bad writing, and bias,”
That IS exactly why newspaper subscriptions are down, the comment actually suggests we don’t read newspapers because the ads bore us!? Just more proof that old media is way behind and disconnected from reality. Why read the paper when you have the internet, or you already pay for TV?
Paul
on 23 Oct 06Newspapers have become little more than printed RSS feeds from the AP and Reuters. Why not skip the middleman?
The true journalism, where facts are gathered and interpreted in the search for truth, has been eliminated in the search for profits.
Flipper
on 23 Oct 06I agree with Paul about AP and Reuters. But note that it is not limited to newspapers—ever notice how many online news sites parrot the same AP/Reuters sources? Or how many times an online source posts a story so quickly they haven’t got their facts straight and they spend the rest of the day correcting their story? Sigh. Welcome to the age of pool journalism (I like talking about the state of journalism today but I think we’re straying a bit from the original topic).
Search Engines WEB
on 30 Oct 06These innovative ads are more aesthetically pleasing – but as newspapers (in there limited way) are trying to innovate to remain competative …..
...Websites are also getting more innovative – by using Dynamic 3-D Flash ads that appear then disappear – as well as embedded flash movies with Audio
Can anyone imagine by the end of this decade – what the strategies will be like?
Patrick B
on 13 Nov 06Typically alot of commentary here is eek Adverstising bad, advertising obtrusive.
I have an idea, pay for all your content.
The minute people were paying $800 a month on cable they will be screaming to have ads back and the DVRs gone.
I have yet to see where with they ads they are “changing” the content to make you think better about the advertiser.
If the newspaper and advertiser agree to run an ad that you find obtrusive discontinue supporting their product, but until such time as you do just that or you are willing to cover the cost of the paper paying all its employees to distribute information to you, which you can imagine will be much more than 50 cents a day a $1.50 on Sundays, come up with and deliver customercentric solutions.
This discussion is closed.