If you’re looking to profit from your online projects – and there’s no reason not to – you’ve got a fine tightrope to walk. You need to sell advertising space and attract your reader’s attention to said advertising space.

Yet you don’t want that advertising to be so obtrusive as to detract from your content. If you can’t find the words for the ads, chances are you’ll bounce right off a site.

Of course, if your ads are too well integrated or hidden, you’ll have low click through rates – leading to lower value for your advertising potential.

Let’s take a look at some examples of extremely obstrusive, annoying, and user-angering advertising.

Screen Blocking Flash Ads

It used to be that pop-up ads were the web’s most wanted nuisance. Those days are long gone, thanks to smart browsers that block pop up advertising.

This week, I found something more annoying than a pop-up – a flash advertisement that blocks the content until you close it.  Take a look at around IMDB and you’re likely to find one.

As soon as the page loads, the flash movie opens in the center of the screen. There is a “close” button at the bottom, but due (I guess) to some javascript errors, this button is moved off the bottom of my screen in Google Chrome. I therefore have no choice but to sit there for 20 seconds or so, until the advertisement closes by default.

This is hideous. This is evil. If IMDB weren’t the greatest repository of movie information on the internet, I’d never go back. As it is, I’m going to start looking elsewhere – for a site that’s informative and respects my user experience.

While this certainly gets the user’s attention, this type of advetisement goes way too far in pulling your attention to the ad. It certainly detracts from the content, and for the average site it would likely lead to a reduced number of repeat visitors.

If content is king, your advertising should never hide your content.

Expanding/Opening Flash Advertisements

Only slightly less annoying than the screen-blocking advertisement is the expanding flash advertisement.

These ads are typically skyscrapers or banners along the edge of the page. When the cursor is hovered over the ad, it expands to two or three times it’s usual size. They could also be designed to open automatically (like the advertisements at imdb), until they are closed.

I found an example this weekend while surfing around CoolMiniOrNot.

This is not quite as aggravating as an advertisement that blocks the main content. I can still read the page and look around.

However, the positioning of the ad makes it so that it usually opens up over the navigation portion of the site. It covers up links I would use to browse around your site.

My typical response? Stop navigating.

If you make it hard for me to get around your site and find content that I find relevant or interesting, I’ll look somewhere else.  After content, navigation is probably the most important part of a site – and blocking your navigation with advertising is a bad idea.

It seems like CMON has stopped using that advertisement, or I’m just getting lucky. I couldn’t find it again to take a screenshot. I did, however, run up against it a dozen times over the weekend while I was posting some of my work to the site.

A Good Example of Where to Put Ads

I despise the type of advertising seen above. It is likely to make me turn around and leave your site right away.

There are, however, perfectly acceptable forms of advertising that are not likely to impede my web surfing experience.  The general principal: keep advertisements on the periphery and don’t let them cover up any important portions of your web site.

A favorite spot within the design community is towards the top of the sidebar on the right side of the screen. The screenshot of CSS-Tricks is a good example.

The very top of the sidebar includes the most important links – RSS feeds and searching. Beneath that, the sidebar is dominated by a series of 125×125 advertisements. The number of advertisements (10) seems a bit much, but in general they don’t get in the way of you consuming the content.

The design of the site also makes it easy to plop a small banner into the header. This is prime real estate in advertising land. If it sits next to the header image and fits nicely, then it’s probably not a bad idea. If you take up a lot of horizontal space to place an ad all by itself – then you might be going too far.

At the moment, my site (Nerds at Work) is another example of minimalist advertising. You’ll notice two main ads – a 250 x 300 block in the sidebar and a banner just above the footer. If anything, I’m too far on the minimalist side – and CTR and revenue will suffer.

However, this is also a relatively new site. When starting out, I think it’s a good idea to trim back on the advertising and maybe make it a bit more prominent over time. In a year or two, I may consider going to a format similar to CSS-Tricks.