| I must admit that I am beginning to long for newspapers again…the paper-kind for those who may be questioning what I mean. I feel this way because somewhere between the onset of online news and today, we reached and exceeded the tipping point specific to the amount of advertising that invades our reading space. No longer is it an enjoyable experience or even convenient to get one’s news from online sources as too many have buried themselves and their readers in pop-ups, slide shows, and blinking banners. To add to it, much of today’s advertising resembles news stories, themselves, forcing readers to take considerable time to discern what is “real” and what is pure “solicitation.” It’s a new norm that is “over the top” in scale, in my opinion. It devalues the reader as well as so many writers who put their “heart and soul” into articles that go unread due to the barriers faulty advertising efforts place between their audiences and their work. No doubt, funding is required to keep these enterprises going but there is a difference between enough and too much (with too much leading to the loss of your audience to other sites that understand that balance much better than you). I am not alone in my frustration nor thinking on the matter. The complaints are mounting from countless readers no longer content with the direction online advertising is going nor how it makes them feel as the online consumer. The advertising assault needs to end, traded in for a balance that respects readers while allowing online businesses and their advertisers to continue in a way (more modest, perhaps) that will only benefit them in the long run. I, daresay, moments like the one pictured above are becoming all too common for many eager to sit with their coffees, eat their croissants, and ingest their morning take on the world via online sources. It is a problem that is very real, very insulting to the audience, and inviting of a necessary solution that just may pave the way to the extinction for sites that don’t adjust their ways appropriately. Remember, we all know of institutions who forgot what they were doing along the way. First, they buried their clientele. Then, they buried themselves. |