Of course, a newspaper has to sell ads in print and online to survive. Subscription rates do not carry any newspaper that I’m aware of. They live or die on advertising. Where do you find the fine balance between getting the advertiser’s product or service out there in an effective manner, and doing it to the point of sensory overload?

This is not a specific slam directed at the newspaper in question. They’re far from being the only paper who has an ad-heavy website. I just wonder if these types of ads are actually still effective. More and more people are running ad blocking software in their browsers. Those that don’t will often choose to just stay away from ad-heavy sites.

I happen to host a site for a business who has run ads on the local paper’s site. As such, I can monitor their stats and see where people are surfing in from. In the past year I have seen click thrus from their web ads drop by nearly 65%. Granted, this is only one advertiser on one site, but I think this is probably a trend across the board.

In my opinion people seem to respond better to small text ads like you find with Google’s advertising partners. If the advertising message is strong enough, interested people will “click” without the need to assault them with Flash or animated GIFs.

Your thoughts?