Web Usability Guru Says Contextual Text Link Ads Are "Disgusting"
For those of you keeping up-to-date with the latest advertising formats that are available to site owners, you will most likely have come across the fairly recent addition from Kontera with their ‘In-Text Advertising’ called ContentLink. In fact, if you’re a regular reader of John Chow’s personal blog, and you own a blog, then it’s most likely that you’ve tried Kontera’s contextual link ads.
With John Chow utilising his influence over his sizeable readership, I’m not surprised to see the advertising format popping up all over the blogosphere. This is helped by the fact that John partnershiped with Kontera and with that, removed the 500,000 minimum page view restriction for signing up.
However, there have been mixed reviews on contextual text link ads of late, and some blog owners have ditched Kontera due irrelevant ads; but some have gone further than that.
Web Usability Guru Not Happy
If you haven’t heard of Jakob Nielsen, then let me introduce him to you quoting The New York Times, as they called him “the guru of web page usability“.
Recently SitePoint interviewed Jakob (the full interview) and he was asked,
“An even newer trend in advertising is the contextual text link. In this format, certain keywords are associated with, and hotlinked to, specific sponsors. What’s the average user’s perception of those ads, and should advertisers be buying into this new format?”
Jakob’s simple, yet profound response was,
“Disgusting is the only appropriate term for these ads.”
It sounds pretty harsh, but the guru went on to explain himself by saying,
“They are undermining the most central element of the Web’s user experience, which is the understanding of what a blue underlined word stands for. Hint: it doesn’t stand for an ad. Luckily these ads are found on very few web sites, so they haven’t confused users that much yet. But if the ads were to become prominent, users would become much more reluctant to click on links, which again would drastically reduce the usability of the entire Web.”
Interesting viewpoint.
Now, Kontera do differentiate their ad links from ‘normal’ links by using a double underline, and for the tech savvy, it’s easy to spot them. Nevertheless, lets be realistic. For some people, to see a different coloured word, or an underlined word, immediately means ‘link’. Therefore, to make some of your ‘links’ ads, could very well be perceived as deceptive, and in turn you lose the confidence of some readers/customers.
Conclusion
Part of the fun and community spirit in blogging, is the (sometimes) excessive linking out to others, and if contextual text link ads have the effect of placing doubts in the mind of the reader as to the validity and benefit of clicking on our links, then surely the extra few dollars are not worth it?
I’d be interested in hearing your view. Do you use contextual text link ads, or do you find them obtrusive and irrelevant?
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Site’s looking great Armen!
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