How to draw the online boundary between news and advertising? At the New York Times this morning, you don’t. I just watched in horror as a couple of fish swam out of Oscar Peterson’s suit and into a nearby Westin ad.
Here’s the link, although it might not work — I’ve reloaded the page twice, and the Westin ad became a Gateway come-on and, now, a Chase promo. But good grief. News sites have to make money, and, as John Heilemann observes, the Times is doing a better job than most. There are some lines, though, that you just shouldn’t swim across.
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The worst gaffe I see in NYT’s web ads is the little bug in the upper right corner that says, “Skip This Ad.”Now I’m a news-side guy, but how can it help any of us to not-so-subtly imply that the ads are an annoyance that can be banished with a mouse click?A few days ago a supermarket checkout clerk commented to me that she used to like the paper I edit, but now “it has too many ads.” Given our ad ratio of about 55%, I can only wish she were correct — the kids need shoes [grin].But to reinforce that perception with every online ad seems to be a less than smart strategy. If the ads are inserted in an intrusive way on the NYT site (and the one you cite certainly is), then that should be fixed — by the web layout folks, not the readers and users.-dh