TheStreet.com TV Advertising Out of Hand?
I love TheStreet.com TV and have talked about it here on the blog before.
Nonetheless, I was just on the site and noticed how the site isn’t hesitant on displaying ads, and more importantly prime ads. You will see below a 728 x 90 header block, the TD Ameritrade small banner, the prime 300 x 250 block just under the search and quotes boxes (awesome CTRs on these blocks), and then you top that all off with a 10 second or so video ad, wow.
(click to enlarge, click again to zoom). This makes me wonder whether or not this is too much. When do you cross the point where the user experience is hurt? Up for debate, but there is probably 80% of the total space being used to display ads here. When does your user experience become harmed by advertising?
I can’t really say I mind this setup. Once you get to the actual video then it isn’t bothering I think, what gets to me are those damn pop up ads and ads that when you hover them they pull down with extra info. What the hell is that anyway? Of course they are the 728 x 90 banner ads RIGHT at the top of the screen so you indirectly hover it every time.
Anyway, I leave you with this image of Jim Cramer from one of his quick clips he does. I paused the video to pick up my phone and it ended up as such. Try to fill in the dialogue if you can.
Video Source: TheStreet.com TVÂ
He defines the term “Dirty Old Man”. LOL
My user experience is harmed when I can’t tell the ads apart from the content, or the content is deliberately being obscured by the ads.
The video site you showed was borderline, but very close to being annoying for me…
I don’t mind when an video ad will come up at the very beginning.. but I hate it when it comes multiple times.. like after every video or every 2 videos
Yeh the first 10 seconds of a video isn’t bad, its almost expected.
Hello sir! Cramer’s had a couple of really good videos on stock replacement using options and shorting common stock. Curious if you’ve gotten around to seeing those clips and what your thoughts are on his method / theory?
I agree with you on the too much advertising. But I think what your problem is that you are not using firefox! Oh yah, firefox with adblcok plugin, I don’t see any ads at all! In fact the video ads are even skipped!!! What is the most annoying with thestreet.com is the multi page articles. They only put 2-3 fucking small paragraphs per page so that you visit the next page and see more ads. So stupid. But then again I don’t see any ads to begin with, just too much clicking.
I don’t mind video ads that are at the end of the video. Kinda like how Wallstrip does it.
I really have to switch over to firefox, the adblock plugin sounds great.
Emailed you, curious to see some of these
Ya know, I used that plugin and it really was great, but to be honest it became so damn weird not seeing ads that I had to turn it off. All the big white blocks of space were just to overwhelming for me.
And Sia, I couldn’t agree with you more, making you read 4 pages for one article is clever but annoying (unless its a really good article)
Sent ya some links. I’m probably going to dedicate a couple of posts to the theory on my blog. I’m running the theory on OptionsXpress’ virtual trading platform as well to see what kind of performance it brings. Normally when something is complex like stock replacement, it appears that not many folks care to use it or really even want to know what it is.