I’ve always been a fan of the news. I got my start with health magazines and lifestyle columns, but any new publication my mom ordered became a favorite pastime to open, unfold and finally read.
There were always advertisements parked next to the latest stories. But as a kid with the option to flip from one page to the other, this rarely was an issue. Random furniture ads never stood a chance.
Now, I rely on my phone for essentially everything, especially the media I consume. My favorite papers have turned digital and instead of a single story panel, I’m looking at websites and apps.
Accessing my preferred media had never been easier.
However, a good thing only lasted so long, and like everyone else, I have quickly become overrun with pop-ups — a pesky form of advertising that suddenly appears upon entry to just about any news site. An annoying addition, these ads feel repetitive, misplaced and ultimately destructive to news accessibility.
The world of advertising started changing for good a decade ago. A 2011 report from the Pew Research Center and Forrester Research projected a 40% growth in U.S. digital advertising between 2011 and 2015 alone — and it hasn’t stopped since.
Consumers, like me, learned to endure the five seconds worth of pop-ups to get our daily news updates.
At first, it felt constricting but manageable. Now the ads are so rampant that some news consumers are unnerved and turning against the very media sites they once admired.
“Ads either come too often and discourage me from reading on, or it prevents me from accessing the site entirely,” DePaul senior Walli Baig said. “It takes away its credibility in my eyes.”
In the end, obnoxious or distasteful marketing like this can hurt the reputation of journalism, which relies on credibility and maintaining the public’s trust.
“The problem is bad marketers who ruin it for the rest of us,” said Jacqueline Kuehl, a senior instructor and executive director of the digital marketing program at DePaul’s Driehaus School of Business. “Bad marketers are marketers with a short-term, short-sighted approach, sacrificing user experience for clicks and money.”
It sounds pretty bleak if honest, genuine news outlets are only out to make a quick buck. But the devil’s advocate in me also knows they need to survive, especially as traditional advertising sales from the days of print have plummeted.
Just last year, national publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times laid off hundreds of staff members.
Online sites such as Buzzfeed and Yahoo News faced similar struggles.
So, unfortunate as it is, pop-up advertisements offer some needed support and provide a bit of a lifeline, although online ads don’t bring in as much revenue as traditional print ads. When done well, pop-ups can also inform audiences about products they might actually want to learn about.
“If advertisers are not targeting the right message to their target market, then it is very annoying,” Kuehl said. “But the advertisers that do it right, those are the advertisers that are not intrusive, and it’s more like inspiring you along your journey.”
If I said I could predict the future of the media, I would be a liar. It’s a field that is constantly changing, whether by the sway of its audience or the economies that support it.
Despite that, I can assume that the industry is currently under some major pressure. Forced into a narrow corridor of tight budgeting and tighter ethics, it’s an avenue that many are trying to navigate.
As a journalist, I approach overstuffed web domains with that knowledge.
As a viewer, I’m less sympathetic because I understand that most readers probably don’t think like I do. Most readers teach, practice law or even pave roads.
They aren’t thinking about why their favorite websites are stuffed with grocery coupons and loyalty reward programs. They are thinking about how hard it is to read their neighborhood beat report, if they’re reading the news at all.
In this instance, I sympathize more with the reader than the journalist.
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