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New web tool endangers ads as a revenue source on-line
"In one 36-hour period, WebWasher kept me from seeing more than 400 items it identified as ads".
Appropriately enough for a publishing conference, Seybold Seminars last month had quite a few thought-provoking seminars on the Web, print and profit.
Profit wasn't necessarily listed in the seminar guide, but it showed up in a strange sort of way, with print promoters apologizing for profitable but not sexy products, and Internet people showing their sizzle while complaining about the hoops they had to jump through in an effort to turn a profit.
That profit may be just a little bit farther out in the future than many newspapers had planned, at least for those who settled on an advertising-driven revenue stream. A browser plug-in called WebWasher made a walk-on appearance at Seybold, causing quite a few at the sparsely attended session to sit up and take notice.
WebWasher got their attention when Holger Reichardt, vice president of marketing for Heidelberg, pointed to its ability to strip advertising out of web pages. "Try that in print," he said. This ability to strip out much of the advertising on the 'Net speeds up delivery but undermines traditional revenue models.
Several months ago, we discussed the two major strategies newspapers were using to qualify readers and make advertisers happy, with my two favorite sites for information going down different paths. Favorite Site No. One is a free site and has quite a bit of advertising. Favorite Site No. Two is subscription-based and also has advertising.
Both sites are spending money to strengthen content and draw yet more readers. Advertisers are paying for much of this, spending money so they can be seen by those highly educated, affluent (well, most of them) readers. There are more readers on Site One, but Site Two's readers have already shown a willingness to spend money on the Internet. Advertisers are happy either way.
But that happiness, and the money that follows, could easily disappear if ads aren't being seen.
In one 36-hour period (10 a.m. April 1 to 10 p.m. April 2), WebWasher kept me from seeing more than 400 items it identified as ads. As near as I could tell, it was correct in all but two of those cases. The two editorial items it blocked were special report logos of no interest. It also blocked more than a dozen of those pop-up windows, which are quite annoying.
With my cable modem it was hard to see WebWasher's promise of a speed improvement, but someone on a dial-up connection could save some serious time.
WebWasher contains information on standard advertising formats on the Web. When you click on a link, it looks at the items being requested from the server and tells the server not to send the ones that are on its list. These features can easily be tweaked by users, giving them powerful control over what they do -- and don't -- see. And corporate IT departments that already deal with an overloaded infrastructure can use this to cut down on the bandwidth required for web browsers, freeing it up for whatever corporate purpose it was originally intended.
Not every obvious ad is trapped, but enough are to seriously undermine the advertising-based revenue model. Web sites could respond by increasing advertorial content, or by charging for product placement (and opening yet another can of worms in the process).
WebWasher is from Siemens, and available for free from its web site. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on where you sit), it's available only for Windows machines, but other versions are on the drawing board.
New web standards and new design tools may give newspapers one way to fight back. With standards such as Scalable Vector Graphics and new tools such as Go Live from Adobe, the words "web" and "design" can be used in the same sentence with a straight face. And, just as it is worth watching the Super Bowl to see the ads, maybe it will be the same on the Web, enticing people to leave them visible.
Scalable Vector Graphics, expected to be set as a standard later this year, will allow far greater information to be placed in a graphic. Imagine a simple locator map that can be enlarged to show yet more and more detail. Or imagine being able to animate text (and graphics), allowing them to move across the page, triggering events as they go.
Also coming soon to a web development tool near you is the ability to precisely position text and images on the page, something taken for granted in print.
The problem with these new tools is that they require readers to have newer browsers. Many of the more advanced features available to designers with Go Live require a 4.0 browser or later, which is much like requiring our readers to buy new glasses or a new press to read the print product.
These and dozens of other new tools are coming down the pike. Now we have to make judicious use of them to keep our readers -- and advertisers -- happy.
-- Steven E. Brier
From NEWSINC., April 12, 1999, Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.