As most of you guys know I work for network and that means I have to be always in the know when it comes to the local “chismis” scene. One of the best sites to get this information from is the Philippine Entertainment Portal or more commonly known as PEP.PH. I missed out on a lot of the showbiz news during the weekend (which was explosive from what I’ve gathered) so I tried to catch up earlier this afternoon. I was a bit overwhelmed though when I visited PEP. Not with the chismis but with how much ads these guys are running to the point that you can’t see the actual content anymore. Check out the screenshot below:
So many... ads.
Note that this screenshot is above the fold. This is what I see on my full browser. It’s like 10% PEP main banner 85% banner ads, and 5% content. They’re definitely making a killing in advertising but I wonder how this affects the user experience. =_= I definitely didn’t bother scrolling down and ended up zoning out completely.
Update
I posted this article on the IMMAP Facebook Page and I’ve been getting a lot of interesting feedback. One school of thought that came up was that you can’t blame PEP because they give away free content and the only way the can monetize right now is through advertising (Thanks Narc!). True that. However you also can’t blame readers for complaining as well.
Another interesting suggestion was for PEP to consider charging a minimum fee so that viewers no longer have to put up with the ads (Thanks Franky!). I think that’s a win-win since the reader gets his content without any distractions and the publisher gets paid for their efforts.
Checked out PEP.PH for myself. You are absolutely right! Terrible user experience. It’s actually worse for me on my desktop, which I keep at 1024 x 768 resolution.
I’m sure they’re earning from the ads, but what good are those ads if they can’t get visitors to scroll down or navigate to other pages?
maybe goes to show how “hard” it is to make money via advertising in the PH where such methods have to be done
Very true. I visited it myself today and well, I saw the same. Actually most of the ads are flash ads which make it much more annoying. For us, the page loads just fine but for some people na mabagal lang ang internet, I’m sure the page loads very slow to them.
I like the idea of charging something for those who don’t want to see ads. I think this is the best viable solution for both parties.
Hi Carlo,
I read Pep all the time. I was also annoyed at the ads but they really have good content so I try to ignore them. For now, I’d rather sort through the ads than pay for their content.
Ad overload is synonymous with greed. I hope they will not forget that they owe their success to their visitors and pissing them off might take away their once perfect business model, which is their website