Save your brand: Don’t forget the ads
As most designers out there, I think ads suck. They’re ugly, they mess up my carefully chosen color scheme, and sometimes they are exactly everything that a designer think is bad taste.
They are also a necessary evil. I won’t begrudge anyone making some money, they can’t afford me otherwise.
Designers like to blame ads, and their clients overall actually, for messing up their designs. However, while that certainly can happen, I think it’s bullshit.
A good design have good ad spaces, the designs are either an integral part of the design, or exists outside of it. Sure, an ugly ad is an ugly ad, but you’ve done your part – as a designer – to minimize the damage.
Take a look at ad-pimped TechCrunch, and the top banner. Or the square between post and comments. While both ads are spotted right away, no doubt the purpose for the advertiser, they look thrown in there and that’s plain ugly.
Do you get a better result if you slap on ads like this, like the square between the comments and the content? Maybe you do, but you’re hurting your brand. That might be a hit you’re willing to take, it depends on what kind of site you’re operating, but to me it’s an unnecessary thing to do.
Take ads into account when doing the design and you’ll be fine. And if you need to place a different ad size on your site, well, change the design to accommodate it.
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Well said. I’m thrown back to a slower iBook right now, and it’s sites like TC (but plenty others too) that really frak me off these days. My status bar just freaks out from all the rubbish that’s downloading, and with my 1024×768 I can’t even start reading the post until I scroll way down somewhere.
I’m not “allowed” to criticize since I’m on wp.com being a cheapskate, but please: this is just greed, not recovering costs or making a living even.
I have no issues with adverts and will even click them, but when things start to look like shite, I just give up. Brand effectively killed.
Cheers and good luck with the new Wisdump. I’m enjoying it.
By Nils on November 9, 2007 12:19 pm
I hear you. Ad bandwidth is another thing that really baffles me. Sure, we’re in the broadband era and everything, but site owners should really look at the total weight of their site as well, including ads (which can be hard of course), and also consider how well the adservers are responding.
And thanks for the kind words, I’m glad you enjoy it!
By Thord Daniel Hedengren on November 9, 2007 9:38 pm
Okay I realise they’re they’re not as badly placed as those in the article examples but did anyone else chuckle when they saw the ads between the content and commentary?
By Adam on November 10, 2007 1:36 am
Hehe, this blog’s design isn’t ideal for ads in any way either, although it’s not as bad as some others. I’ll remedy that in the future, no fear.
For the record, check out http://www.rethord.com and the kind of between post and comments ad placement I run there. I think that’s a good solution.
By Thord Daniel Hedengren on November 10, 2007 1:40 am
Good call, Thord, weak ad placement for an article talking about weak ad placement
By matt on September 23, 2010 10:42 pm