Responsive Advertising →
Mark Boulton:
Recently at Mark Boulton Design, we’ve been working on a redesign of the global visual language for a large sports network. Like many web sites delivering news and editorial content, they rely on advertising for their revenue — either through multiple ad slots on the page, or from video pre-rolls.
Early on in the project, we discussed Responsive Web Design at length. From an editorial and product perspective, it makes perfect sense. Who wouldn’t want their content adapting to a device their reading it on? Who wants to pinch-zoom again and again? From a business and product perspective, we’ve seen this from multiple clients who want to take advantage of certain interactions on certain devices — swiping for example — for users to better engage with the content in a more native way. All good. And then advertising comes along and things get challenging.
There’s a lot of good thinking in this piece on a topic I’ve been wrestling with since the BostonGlobe.com design started making waves. For sites that rely on display ad revenue, I’m not sure responsive design solves more problems than it creates.
/via Al Shaw
