March 22, 2001

1:12 PM

Is this the future of web? Is it me or are many Internet sites starting to mimmick newspapers? Large banner ads, aken to the full page spreads of newspapers and magazines. Oversized headlines. What next? Have major sites abandoned the internet as a separate medium?
posted by igloo (9 comments total)

I'm not sure what your question is getting at. Clearly the sites that are instituting these large ads are taking a sobering look at the economics of the medium. The last part really has me scratching my head: the internet is a separate medium; if anything, from now on these ventures will have to pay their own way. If they're not serving their purpose as promotional material, if readers are actually switching to the internet, they have to be exposed to advertising or pay a subscription.

It may not be the future of the entire web, but it will certainly be a big part of the future of the commercial web.
posted by dhartung at 2:07 PM on March 22, 2001

I see an opportunity: sites that filter other sites -- strip off the ads, reformat the fonts, etc.
posted by jrbender at 2:24 PM on March 22, 2001

I went to the site, didn't see any banners, then I realized that I modified my host file to strip all this junk. So... I don't care. Salon's writing/quality has been going down the crapper for ages now. I'm not going to shed tears when they go under.
posted by Witold at 2:47 PM on March 22, 2001

I'm going to shed some tears, because if Salon can't find a viable business model, it's going to make it much harder for the next big Web publication to get funding.
posted by kindall at 2:55 PM on March 22, 2001

We've gone over this quite a few times in the last few weeks/months.

My two cents : I don't like ads, but I'd rather have free stuff with ads than have to pay for every site on the web.
posted by jragon at 3:01 PM on March 22, 2001

What I meant by all this was that I feel a lot of people overlook the concept of 'internet as a separate medium'. Seeing oversized ad banners and headlines on sites, especially larger ones only solidifies that belief for me.

I didn't really mean to comment on any site in particular but chose those sites as examples of a trend I've been noticing.

I don't think it's that they don't understand the internet, but that they are sacrificing that knowledge for 'what works'. At least, they're taking an approach that what works in print, may work on the internet afterall. Especially if they cram it down our throats. So what does that mean? Making things large. Hoping that eventually we'll get used to it.

Hey, what do they have to lose, the're already hurting for eyeballs as it is, right?
posted by igloo at 8:31 PM on March 22, 2001

Igloo, do you live in the same real world as the rest of us?

Free didn't work.
posted by dhartung at 1:38 AM on March 23, 2001

is this the future of the web?

no. the future of the web is what WE make of it. as long as we continue to validate the erroneous assumption that the moneyed, commercial assholes determine the future of the web, we remain part of the problem and no part of the solution.
posted by quonsar at 5:31 AM on March 23, 2001

Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh, my eyes. What are they thinking at MarketWatch? Just when a few people are catching on to the concept of simplifying their sites, they go and redesign to that mess. Some of the navigation is improved, but mini banner ads in your pop-up menus? Yikes.
posted by quirked at 8:03 AM on March 23, 2001