[thelist] C|Net's Redesign / Interesting argument...

[M. Shane DeVault]

You know, I like the design of the ads.  They are inovative, informative,
and though they are slap in the middle of the screen, they don't screw up
the text any more than a magazine ad or a newspaper ad does the printed
page.

For years, we have enjoyed *advertising revenue* subsidized news papers at a
minute fraction of the cost of each paper.  I pay 50 cents for a two hundred
page news paper, at 22x17, cover to cover with not only news, but
advertisements. And guess what? I never think to complain that the ads mess
up a single column of text.

In magazines, there are entire sections in the middle of articles about
advertising...and that helps bring the cost of the magazine from about
$17.00 an issue to about $4.00 per issue.

Yet here we are in the world of the web, and because we had two years of
IPO-Driven, ad-free bliss, someone puts advertisements in a way in which the
Advertiser receives the maximum benefit, and boom! We yell bloody murder!

NO! I enjoy *free content*. I even CLICK advertisements to make sure that I
have that content in the future.  We all should embrace the advertisements
that C/Net has done as both *innovative*, and fun.  Heck--some of the
presentations are quite nice--and they are all marginally intrusive.

Free content versus advertisement-free fee-based content?  Hands down. Gimme
the ads, bub.

Shane.DeVault at centurytel.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Crawford" <jcrawford at avencom.com>
To: "evolt.org's "thelist"" <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 12:20 PM
Subject: [thelist] C|Net's Redesign / Interesting argument...


> Someone here lauded c|net's new ads ... here's an article from Jason
> Calcanis of SAR which says they're a bold move...
>
> http://www.digitalcoastweekly.com/issues/default.html#Headline3586
> Why CNET's ''Big Box'' Advertisements Are a Brilliant Ploy (Or,
> Content's Ultimatum: Pay or Say Goodbye
>
> The argument is basically this: the ads are big, intrusive, and
> guaranteed a response - and that their placement is a possibly
> intentional move to get people to either
> a) get sick of ads and pay for content
> b) learn to live with advertising
>
> - Joe
> --
> Joe Crawford ||||||||||||||       mailto:jcrawford at avencom.com
> ||||||||||||||||||||||||             http://www.avencom.com
> |||||||||||||||||||||||||||      Avencom: Set Your Sites Higher
>
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