Forbes: 18% Content, 40% Ads

I was browsing the web today and came across this article: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0328/billionaires-11-profile-yuri-milner-billionaire-friended-web.html. It looked interesting and I wasn’t sure who Yuri Milner was so I thought I would check it out.  Once I got to the page though, I was so confused by Forbes layout, that I never got to actually reading the article.  By far the most overwhelming thing on the page was an ad about investment mistakes. WTF? I came to learn about Yuri Milner, not my own lack of investment prowess.  I then looked around and realized something: the vast majority of the page wasn’t actual content. I was curious so I fired up Photoshop and broke down the different sections (White Space, navigation, Content, Ads) of the first screen of the website, (no scrolling aka “above the fold”) by width and height.  Then, brushing off my basic geometry skills, got the pixel area of the different sections and compared them to the total pixel area of the page.

Here are the results:

Navigation: 15%
White Space: 27%
Content: 18%
Advertisement: 40%

No, you didn’t read that wrong.  Advertisement took up over twice as much space on the first screen of the article than the content.  Maybe that’s why the article had to be six pages long.

Just another example of print media just not getting the web, and page design being driven by a bottom line.

Here are some screen shots:

 

Forbes Article Screenshot
Forbes Article Screen Shot
Green = Content, Red = Ads, Light-Blue = White Space, Dark Blue = Navigation
Forbes – Content Overlay