With the economy in the dump, B2B online publications are scrambling to meet their numbers by emphasizing on ad placement rather than content. "Content is king!" the people use to cry. Well recently, the king has been overthrown and fed to the lions. A new warlord has taken over with no clear future for the people of the kingdom. The following is a tale based on a true story from not too long ago...

The People
Mostly involved with the mechanics of everday things, the people that dwelled within this kingdom were analytical, short on time, logical, smart, and collaborative. What they seeked was information without the fat.

The New Warlord's Offer

Rough Sketch of the new kingdom

Round and Round We Go
Don't be decieved by the simple gridlike layout of the sketch above. When we dig deeper, we discover that the content area will be fitted with a rotating carousel; a feature proposed by the warlord's close advisers, the editorial team. The reasoning, to have people buy in on the idea of a new regime by creating the "Oohs and Ahhs" of what every new king should bring to their people.

Medieval Carousel

The warlord knew what was truly good for his people, but was swayed by his editorial staff, a ruling majority in his cabinet.

A few days later, a team of workers (also known as the producers) constructed the rotating carousel in hopes of reviving the once vibrant and passionate people from the days of yore. 

Monetizing the People's Land
After laying numerous attacks on the kingdom and finally overthrowing the king, the warlord had to lay down a new plan of attack in finding ways to generating revenue to help repair the damages. The plan set out by his sales team was aggressive and in order to repair the infrastructure as quickly as possible, the king took over the largest plots of land and forced the people to work.

The people doing what they're not supposed to do, working the 728x90

Plots as large as 728x90, 300x250, and the 180x150 were on the sales team's agenda. A few were still not satisfied and suggested taking over an additional 960x45 every now and then to have the children work on. This reappearing oasis (in the eyes of the sales team) is what we've come to know today as the sliding billboard.

Again, the king knew what his people wanted, but this time, his sales team had swayed his beliefs.

A Year Later
After a grueling year of working the lands and dealing with false expectations set out by the king and his staff, the people's morale had decreased, their health at a minimum. A few of the children working on the 960x45 plots even perished during the harsh winter season. After a year, the people had given up and were ready to leave the once flourishing kingdom in hopes of finding a better home.

In Hindsight
Some of you might have dealt with such problems when facing a challenging redesign. In the short run, you DO make your money with an excessive amount of space devoted to ads and things that pop, but in the long run, people eventually get fed up with distractions that don't make their tasks such as finding relevant information easier.

In the long run, it is the people that count and they are the ones that make up the kingdom and drive revenue, not the ads. They know what they really want, not the editorial and/or sales team (with the exception of a few, but are never heard).

There are other methods of generating revenue while building your online presence. Giving ads greater priority in designs isn't the only path to a healthy online future. I've witnessed sites built off of subscriptions thrive without the need for ads. What about sites that promote offline meetups while forming partnerships with establishments to sponsor those offline events? How about spreading the focus of your advertising to other areas like desktop widgets?

There are probably a hundred different other ways to skin this cat and right now, we are stuck. Relying too much on ad revenue reminds me of how much we rely on oil and you can see where we are with that right now...

2008-10-14 12:22:10 Brian Carr Madness! That's a disgusting layout. The Layout promotes distraction over curiosity.

2008-10-14 17:14:42 jennie your analogies are so vivid! this will make a great bedtime story.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.