How embarrassing. Is the revenue from such a junk ad really enough to warrant eroding the credibility of a site that's purportedly about user experience? It's a bit like blasting 100 db audio ads in a new restaurant's dining room because "revenue is important."

One or two weeks ago I submitted an article[1] I posted to my blog to both HN and Reddit. I also added a Google Ads block hidden in the sidebar (admittedly not the best spot) to get some experience with Adsense since I had never used it before. So far I'm on 6000 page impressions and 5 clicks with the estimated earning of a pack of chewing gum.

So extrapolate from this what you will if I had plastered more ads in more prominent places.

[1] http://aerique.blogspot.com/2011/01/baby-steps-into-genetic-...

Conventional wisdom is to drop the ads from a piece when it first goes live so that Reddit/Digg/HN/Stumbleupon can jump on it without distraction. Those sites come with a 0% clickthru anyway so you're not losing anything.

Then, a week later, you can put the ads back in place. All the linking has been done, so now you get people flowing in thru organic SEO. Those people are more likely to stick around and possibly click ads.

Done right, everybody is happy.

> Those sites come with a 0% clickthru anyway so you're not losing anything

On the other hand most users from these sites will not see the ad in the first place because the use adblock

Percentage of people that people using AdBlock think are using AdBlock: 100%

Percentage of people actually using AdBlock: Much less than 100%

I've never heard that put so elegantly before. I just quoted you on my Facebook. I've never used AdBlock and I never have, but I've always wondered how many people actually use it because the people who do use it would have you believe it's the majority of people on the net (from our demographic, at least).

I'm curious about the numbers as well. I couldn't imagine surfing without it (or Privoxy or Junkbuster in the days of yore) although I do disable it for a few sites I support.

The only reason I would click on an ad like in the example is by accident. (I'm not using adblock by the way.)

A few thoughts:

* AdSense is commonly known as blogger welfare. There are a few people making huge money from it, but they use techniques you would probably never want to adopt (content farms, keyword arbitrage, etc...). Generally speaking, you use AdSense to supplement your main monetization strategy that should be something better.

* Boxes, like the one criticized in the article, tend to convert very well.

* Programmers are the worst demographic to monetize, particularly with ads, and even worse with the often not-so-contextual ads from AdSense.

* ProgrammingZen and Math-Blog used to receive similar amounts of traffic when I used to have ads on both. I make 4 figures a year from AdSense ads placed on Math-Blog. ProgrammingZen on the other hand generated a few dollars a month at best, much like your experience. Keep in mind that Math-Blog is still fairly technical, so I wouldn't discount AdSense a priori, but the less technical the better (in general).

* Having a programming or very technical blog I'd suggest that you try to monetize/support it through affiliate links to reputable merchants like Amazon. I make 4 figures a month from the Amazon Associates program alone (albeit not from ProgrammingZen alone, of course).

Thanks for the points. One of the reviewers of the article (Hi Marijn!) made most of these as well. It was never my intention (or expectation) to make money with it, I just wanted to see the other side of AdWords since I might have a need for those in the near future.

Corollary to the author's point: Adblock is one damn easy way to improve your own user experience.

I'm more a fan of simply walking away if I can't afford/don't want to pay the asking price.

If a website doesn't want me reading their content for free, they should put it behind a paywall.

They are free to try to monetize it using ads. And you are free to use adblock. Just like you are free to be unpolite.

Just don't complain when people don't like you. And don't complain about content behind paywalls.

I hang up on telemarketers with no qualms of being impolite. I don't read content behind paywalls (and don't complain about them - it is readily apparent that I'm not in their target demographic).

I treat people that know me courteously and they like me.

:-P

Telemarketers are a whole different story: You never asked them to contact you. : )

Websites are a whole different story. You decided to visit them. Once you are on their site, they decide the rules. (As long as they are not doing anything illegally.)

Also note that I sometimes choose to block ads even if it

Wait, what? Where was I unpolite? More to the point: if anything is rude, it's tricking users into looking at ads instead of the content they were promised when they clicked on a link.

>Wait, what? Where was I unpolite?

By trying to decide what is accepted behaviour for web site owners to do on their own web sites. (Apologies if I misunderstood your point.)

> More to the point: if anything is rude, it's tricking users into looking at ads instead of the content they were promised when they clicked on a link.

Do you also complain about advertising at shopping centers, bus stations, airports etc?

> By trying to decide what is accepted behaviour for web site owners to do on their own web sites.

The point of Adblock is not to control what web site owners do on their own web sites, but only to control how I experience that content. As I wrote in my OP, "Adblock is one damn easy way to improve your own user experience. [emphasis added]"

Web site owners are welcome to try and get their visitors to look at ads. Their visitors are welcome, in turn, to take measures to block those ads.

> Do you also complain about advertising at shopping centers, bus stations, airports etc?

Yes, as a matter of fact - rather, I don't complain about it but I do try to avoid going to those places for just that reason. However, whereas it's hard to block out billboards in external locations where one is physically present (unless one is willing to accept a Steve Mann-level of technological mediation), it's quite easy to block ads on web pages that are served freely into my own browser, which is installed on my own computer.

I'd much prefer ads over a paywall.

I couldn't resist.. the irony was too great after seeing http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2138141

:-)

These huge google ads blocks that are in-line and/or floated left such that the content starts in the upper right, flows down a narrow column and then continues on the left underneath the ad are getting particularly annoying, especially on sites that show archived mailing list content formatted with a fixed width font. The entire flow of the page is broken because of it.

At least the spyrestudios page begins the content below the ad. Sure, it's putting the content below the fold, and it stands out like a sore thumb. If the ad spanned the entire column, it might not look so bad. But what's even worse is that there is most likely a standard sized ad that appropriately fits that container, bother horizontally and vertically, that if used wouldn't make it look like you're driving into a billboard built across the interstate.

sometimes revenue is sadly in tension with user needs.

Everyone who needs to pay rent has ads in some form, and ads always suck:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/627097/how-to-tell-if-a-b...

Unless of course you're a bubble company building to flip before you're profitable, in which case you get to point fingers and laugh at the rest of us while we spend hours wrenching the last dollar out of our cash flow plans.

In some ways, reddit gets it right - they put games in the ad space, which trains the users to look at that area a bit more often.

Correct me if I'm wrong, haven't they been having issues with money for servers recently?

As far as I can tell, you're wrong, but only on the "recently".

yes, but my opinion is that ad placement is doing more harm than good. for the site's audience, I think it's a safe assumption that they are fairly web-savvy and able to detect ads without too much effort. As a google adsense block, it's a cost-per-click ad. You see where i'm going with this... savvy users, poor ad placement = very few clicks = no revenue.

of course, that is all anecdotal... I'd be really interested to see real performance numbers on it.

Those ad placements above the content get very high click-throughs when someone arrives at the page via search. One technique that I've used is to only show the adsense to search visitors. Regular visitors tend not to click ads so chances are you won't lose much by doing so.

This technique works in other contexts, too, and is extraordinarily underutilized. (Other options include displaying "house ads" for e.g. pitching "Join our mailing list to get X" or "Our best articles" or "Subscribe to our RSS feed" to convert search-driven transients into recurring visitors.)

You are right. When I first saw the page earlier, I closed it again without even looking at the content because I wasn't bothered scrolling and all I saw was a dirty, ugly page (google ads - a bunch of random links - are ugly as hell). Only after you posted your image did I actually look at the content.

'in tension' is one thing. 'in ugly contradiction to your message' is another.

mostly when users are not paying ones ;)

Two easy ways to improve user experience. As a user: Use noscript As a designer: Keep your content above the fold, and your logos not gigantic. There's no reason I should look down 480~ pixels just to see the first line of the content.

NoScript is terrible for UX. Every time I wanted to watch a video, or see a slideshow, etc, I had to right click, temporarily allow scripts (or whitelist domain)... It just made browsing tedious. I find AdBlock to be more than adequate, for most sites. The Chrome version isn't quite as good as the FF version, but it should improve.

If you enable the option to always temporarily whitelist the domain you are currently on, it gets a lot better.

That way, when you are on example.com, it will still load any scripts hosted on example.com, but not Facebook/Twitter/ad/other widgets.

Is this a new feature? I don't remember having that option when I played with it 2-3 years ago.

+1 for pointing out the inverse relationship between logo size and usability.

I don't think the whole "above the fold" mentality is as relevant now as it was a few years ago. Monitors are bigger, and people are used to scrolling up and down a page. Sure, there should be something above the fold to entice the user to scroll, but to keep your content above the fold is just asking for a cluttered design.

You're scrolling now, aren't you? :-)

See http://iampaddy.com/lifebelow600/

Have you heard the "make my logo bigger pills" joke about marketers?

Th best way to improve user experience is to first understand who is your user! I am surprised to see how Apple has ruined(no offense to Steve Jobs) the whole concept about a startup figuring out its customers. Fine agreed, that an Apple Ipod is meant for 4 to "time you die" years of person, but in reality for a startup to grow has to stay focussed because it simply brings in mediocrity which leads to mediocre user experience and finally lowers the barriers to entry. So its always great to focus small, satisfy early adoptors appetite and then roll out big. At the end of the day, it is going to be the early adoptors who are going to decide your product's future to a great extent!

Either they fixed it or Adblock is actually working on Chrome

1 damn easy way to improve user experience and also starve.

Right, because those are the only options. Either fill the top half of your site with ads or go bust.

I agree. Then again, content of your article was below the bottom edge of my screen as well, le sigh. http://i.imgur.com/XFpKx.png

I would venture a guess that dodging ad blocks and bad layout is pretty much the same thing.

Why not just use NoScript (and disallow googlesyndication.com)?

Why the downvote?

This is about not annoying your users. If you wanted to tell your users to use NoScript, it'd be far easier to just not have the ads in the first place ;)