I made a snarky linkblog entry about a BoingBoing post that read more like an eBay ad. A friend of mine IMed me to suggest I look at BoingBoing without Adblock Plus, that it looked like NASCAR now. Boy howdy! There's at least three graphical ad units (two animated) and three textual ad units on a single blog post. That's not counting the fourteen or so badges on the left hand side promoting stuff the authors are personally involved with.

I love BoingBoing, I really do, and I read it every day and I love what they do and I still remember back when it was a zine on paper. And it's great that Battelle is building a media empire out of advertising; sometimes journalism leads to riches! But really, six ad units on a single blog post? Is that a good idea? I particularly like how the FMPub text ads are colored almost like you'd already clicked on the link; I wonder if camouflage increases clickthrough?

I've made a screenshot of a BoingBoing page with the actual post content helpfully grayed out so it doesn't distract you. Sorry the screenshot isn't animated; the chump on the left is smiling and nodding at his phone like he's in a Mentos commercial.

culture
  2007-06-18 20:09 Z