Spam or Advertising

Srhaber brings up an interesting concept on their blog today about when does advertising become spam, and when does advertising take away from what could otherwise be a rewarding experience on the web site. We would like to bring up a couple of examples of the concept as a way to generate some conversation around the issue.

MySpace Advertising as Spam – looking at MySpace and the 7 or 8 ads per page, per view, per anything you want to do on the web site distracts from the things people are trying to do on the web site. While it is one thing to have advertising, the number of ads per page can be distracting from what the person is supposed to do at the web site. Because of that, in our mind, we think that the whole MySpace experience is about spam and the rampant greed that has lead to that much advertising on the web site.

Facebook Advertising as a blind spot – we have seen advertising on Facebook, but is has not left an impression on us, as we use the web site, and have fun with it, doing the social networking thing. Ads are not in the way, the ads do not distract from the user experience, which is all about what we were planning on doing at the time on the web site. Bebo is another example of good advertising, not advertising as spam.

Social Networking sites like Digg and Netscape also have not increased advertising to the point where it is spam either. Meaning that the use of the web site is not distracting, nor gets in the way of doing what the person intended to do there. So these sites along with Facebook and Bebo are not advertising as spam.

Some of the bigger news sites like Kiro TV 7 in Seattle, or CNN are advertising as spam, the advertising distracts the user, meaning that the person is not doing what they intended to do, they are busy fighting to keep their eyes on the news story. As well, many of the popups and pop unders that come along with visiting web sites like that are distracting, hence the development of popup blockers, that just at times do not work. When you watch your browser struggle to stop a popup from happening (by listening to the tink sound so many times you think it is a computer error) then that would be advertising as spam, and decreases the quality time that a person could be spending at the site.

We are interested in hearing what our readers think, advertising as spam, or spam as advertising? How much advertising on a site is too much?