Has CNN created the worst ever mobile ad experience?
I arrived from Twitter via the CNN RSS feed.
Before I could see the article I wanted, I had to endure an overlay (or lightbox) showcasing the terrible side of content discovery networks.
Even if I’m not interested in car insurance or military flashlights, the text at the top right informs me I must consider them for 10 seconds before I can see my article.
Furthermore, this paid content is described as ‘paid parnter (sic) content’ in the top left.
So what’s so bad about this?
First, the obvious, I’ve clicked to read an article, why on Earth would I click away to another article before my original one has even appeared?
Then there’s the method of interruptive delivery. Overlays often appear on a range of websites and are seen particularly in ecommerce to capture email addresses.
However, on mobile, where network speeds vary so dramatically, disrupting the user’s experience like this is misguided. Users have less patience on mobile and are looking for relevant content.
Anything that suggests I’ll be tortured during a mobile experience often leads me to abandon the article (and did in this case).
Furthermore, this is not in keeping with the CNN brand at all.
Yes, CNN articles on desktop and mobile include some annoying and arguably necessary ad experiences (clickbait content discovery at the bottom of articles, autosound video ads on the right hand side), but its UX is very good.
As you can see from the article below, text is chunky, navigation is conventional.
CNN creates content I actually want to read in a format I enjoy. So why compromise that so thoroughly?
What can we take away from this?
Well, it seems this ad experience is getting noticed (see this Reddit thread).
On mobile, content discovery networks surely face an impending crisis. Can quality publications continue to compromise their mobile content with interruptive sponsored headlines when, for all the increase in clickthrough and ad revenue, these publishers won’t truly know who they are alienating?
Dark patterns in UX still abound – taking the user somewhere that feels like the antithesis of what they expected to discover.
The sooner those in marketing and advertising view the problem of profitability in the round, the better the solution for all.
Mobile network Three is certainly on to something in identifying the problem of mobile ads, with its ad blocking trial testing the following features:
- No data charges for downloading adverts.
- Privacy and security fully protected.
- Advertising must be relevant and interesting (not intrusive and unwanted).
Let me know what you think about these kind of mobile ad experiences in the comments below.
For further reading on the background of ad blocking, see the following posts:
