I don't think advertising is a antiquated but banners are. We are trying something new and this is it. It's new and needs to be fine-tuned but we hope it will be less annoying than seeing banners all over a page. Give us another chance or at least keep an open mind.
We don't mention the 'c' key anywhere yet and have only implemented it a few days ago after a reader suggested it. We are testing it now and really like it so will make it more clear asap.
Hmm no, thats now how that works. If you browse aroudn the site we don't show the ad. If you visit new from twitter or google or facebook we show yyou the ad once. When you go to a second page we don't show it anymore. So when you open a private window it assumes you are new and shows you the ad.
As far as I know adblockers aren't blocking our Canvas ads yet. I don't mind if they do though. I think it is better to give up trying to make money on people who really hate ads and instead focus on people who don't mind them. Feel free to read our content with an adlocker. I just hope to tweet or like our stuff every now and then. :-)
I thought about that a lot of course! I'm the founder and CEO of TNW and worked on the canvas ad with the design & dev team for months. We do know some people absolutely hate ads. No matter how small. And this one is huge! But we figured the upside of having a beautiful ad that more people would like would be worth the downside of losing a few people who hate any ad and probably even use an adblocker. I don't dislike people who use adblockers and think it is fine if they read our site for free and without making us any money. But if you do I also don't think you have mucch right to complain about ads anyway.
That's too bad. We did test it extensively and although some people were distracted by the ads, they do understand theres a post hovering on the right that wants to move back into the page. But we are working on ways to make this more clear. I do understand this is a big difference from the ads you see on other websites and we do hope you'll give them another chance.
I agree that's ironic and something we (I'm TNW's CEO and worked closely with the dev them on this) should work on. I also believe we built this for the future and computers will catch up with some of the more innovative stuff we built. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't make it better and we will. We are improving the code and functionality every day so the canvas ad you might see today (we don't show them on every visit) might be better than the one you've seen yesterday.
That would be a shame because we can produce some awesome content because we have an advertising model that works. Also, if you visit TNW through the front page you won't see an ad. ANd if you go to a story directly you only see an ad every now and then. I hope you give us another try. Boris (CEO TNW)
A screenshot doesn't do it much justice. What other people don't see is that the article is moving in a bit and a hover or 'c' key moves it in completely. If you think the ad looks too big, pick up any paper magazine and look at those ads. In my Wired magazine it takes 7 pages to get to the content. We show you ONE ful page ad that is easy to ignore and generates revenue that enables us to hire writers and provide you with free content. Not such a shitty deal after all? Boris (CEO TNW)
I wrote that. I'm the founder and CEO of TNW and came up with part of the Canvas ad. After I pitched the idea of developing a sexy interstitial that would work intuitively and easy to use our designer and dev team came up with this, and I love it. I also understand your frustration. I know this is a bigger ad than you are used to. I also think you'll get used to it if you give it another chance. I see advertisers love it and we see readers tweeting about ads (when was the last time you even looked at an ad, clicked on one, or tweeted about one because you liked it? Right!) and mostly we get positive replies. And then there's a group of people who absolutely HATE them. So, we are trying to improve them as much as possible to make everybody love them, or at least not hate them as much. First thing you could try: hit the 'c' on your keyboard when you hit a Canvas ad and it will magically disappear. We will make it a lot better over the next week but always appreciate input. So contact me here, or at [email protected] with anything you've got.