News Website Advertisements

An obvious addition to websites in general are adverts. The advantage with online adverts is that they can be interactive and more colourful than printed ads. With news websites there is a growing need for more portable access. That comes in the form of having mobile apps and websites tailored to work on mobile internet. Its almost going backwards in that people want to be able to read the news online whilst say on the bus. Whats wrong with the genuine article?

 On the Sun's website slightly below the fold but still quite large is an advert to read the paper on an iPad. It seems quite a gimmicky thing at the minute but when the iPad and other tablets become more popular it will take off more.

 The Times' site has an ad that is more conservative and offers membership with the promise of extra benefits. Although you cannot see it in the screen shot but it is a flash ad and fades in out with different information, its a good touch as the motion grabs your attention. The only thing I don't understand is the horrible green, it makes it look almost army like.

 The Guardian almost doesn't care about its more direct news. It is right at the bottom of the page and the images showing its an iPad app also are very small when all the other ads have been rather large its insignificant. Although what they offer is quite expansive they don't show it. 

From looking at the three websites among others the majority of sites are advertising apps and the like so it will be necessary to create an advert for my website advertising an app for the newspaper.

CES 2011 on The Guardian

 Although advertised minimally on the homepage and "below the fold", it had a profound effect on myself as I am an admirer of all things technical and this is one of the most anticipated events of the new year.

 

Once you click through the link you are offered the chance to watch a live video stream of the event which is very current as it is happening as you watch it. News is becoming obsolete far more quickly than it used to so things like live feeds are paramount to success. 

If you choose to look at the full coverage instead you are greeted with this page:

This page is all about the 'recent', with the 'most recent' taking the centre and the 'latest from our technology blog' taking the right side. From something so small on the homepage to a huge subsection it seems silly that it should be advertised so little. People who aren't as interested in new technologies may just bypass the link all together and miss out on everything there is to do on the page. 

For me this signals an idea to not overload the home page, keep it simple so things do not fall through the cracks. Obviously I will be including a 'most read' section that allows viewers to see what is 'trending' at the moment but it will not be jam pakced with information which the majority of news websites are.  

News Feeds

A common staple in the majority of news websites is the news feed. It's something that has stuck with me as important as it is constantly updated and is the newest 'news'. It cannot be more current than a "BREAKING NEWS" banner that fades to more breaking news.

 I looked at the BBC news banner and the Guardian banner and they are both very similar. Both have a slide show effect in which the subject of the news stays for around 5 seconds then fades to another piece of news. you can choose to skip to different articles or pause the current article and click through to view the whole story. 

I like the fact you can click through to view the rest of the page as it introduces the reader to other things than the static articles on the home page therefore their experience of the website is broadened.

The 'Just Published' box is from The Sun website and is a variation on the news banner. It has a just published, most read, and most discussed news stories. This encapsulates everything the other banners do but adds more for the readers to do. The most discussed section is very clever as it isn't down to the makers of the website to produce the sections most discussed topics. The readers discuss the articles therefore other readers see the almost 'reputation' of the article and are more likely to read it.

Orange Ballonacy

My first post will be about Orange's Balloonacy campaign. It ran from the 8th of November till the 17th and was a game involving people signing up and selecting a balloon and naming it. The players then raced accross the internet to come first and win prizes.

"Balloonacy is set to push social media to its limits.  Not only can players ‘wave’ to each other, they can also boost each others’ balloons, use tools built specifically for Facebook and Twitter so players can find friends and follow each other, chat, share their success, boast about their progress towards the end of the internet and even announce performance badges achieved.

And there are of course amazing prizes to be won.  The fastest overall balloon will win a super deluxe, eleven-night, five star trip to Kenya, including an unforgettable hot air balloon ride over the Masai Mara.  Other prizes include a weeks holiday for two in Egypt and free cinema tickets for a year." 

I really liked this campaign as it spanned the whole internet and involved people using the game and expanding it themselves with the creators being able to sit back and watch it snowball. It took into account social media as a major platform to expand the game and allowed users to invite their friends and let the game grow.

What I have taken from this is the social media aspect. It is a great way to spread awareness of a certain thing and in the newspapers case we will be able to expand the online readership which is the ultimate goal.