Digg Advertising Gone Mad

So, I woke up this morning and, after getting a coffee, opened my browser. One of my first hits of the day is always Digg – just to check out what’s on the front page. But this morning I was greeted with a monster of an ad as seen in the top half of the image below. Now, it did slide away after 10-15 seconds (I wasn’t counting), but not before I could grab a screenshot of it.

So, there it is. See the problem?  Just for fun, I’ve overlayed it with coloured blocks: blue is navigation, green is advertixing, and red is content. My screen resolution is 1280×800, and I’ve trimmed off the browser stuff, leaving a 1263 x 676 pixel canvas, or 853,788 pixels.

Before

Navigation: We have the main navigation area (Area #1, 1200 x 110, total of 132,000; 15.46% of viewable space) and a smaller navigation area above the stories (Area #2, 885 x 30, total of 26,550; 3.11% of viewable space. So our navigation takes up about 18.57% of my screen. Not bad.

Advertisements: Here we go – there are three ad blocks visible. The massive ad (Area #3, 900 x 360, total of 324,000; 37.95%), the self-promotional Digg Dialogg ad (Area #4, 885 x 50 , 44,250; 5.18%) and the sidebar ad block on the right (Area #5, 300 x 177, 53,100, 6.22%). The ads are therefore taking up 49.35% of the viewable space. Let me repeat that: fourty-nine point three five percent. For advertisements. That’s MASSIVE.

Content: Just the one block here. It’s area #6, measures just 885 x 50 so it totals 44,250 pixels. That’s just 5.18%.

Whitespace: So one thing I haven’t touched on yet is the unmarked space. I’ve been including it in my math, though. I calculated it be subtracting the other three from the original total, and we end up with 229,638 pixels – that’s 26.90% of the screen real estate. More tha a QUARTER of the space is empty. If we don’t include this “empty” space in the above numbers and only looks at space that contains content, our math changes a lot. Navigation takes up 25.40% of used space, content now fills 7.09% and the advertisements are – ready for this? 67.51% More than TWO THIRDS of the used space is advertisements. How insane is THAT?

After

Now, after the ad collapses, we’re in much better shape I’ll summarize this part in numbers only:

• Area #1 – Top Navigaton: 1200×110; 132,000 total; 15.46%
• Area #2 – Story Navigation: 885×30; 26,550 total; 3.11%
• Area #3 – Top Ad: 900×60; 54,000 total; 6.32%
• Area #4 – Dialogg Ad: 885×50, 44,250 total; 5.18%
• Area #5 – Sidebar Ad: 300×250, 75,000 total; 8.78%
• Area #6 – Main Story Area: 885×350, 309,750 total; 36.28%
• Area #7 – Sidebar Top Stories: 300×215, 64,500 total; 7.55%
• Whitespace – 147,738 total; 17.30%

So, post-shrink, navigation still consumes 18.57%, content has been upped to 43.83% and advertising sits at 20.28%. If we look at JUST used space, we have 22.46% going towards navigation, 24.54% is ads, and – thankfully – 53.01% is content.

Bottom Line

So, what’s my point? Quite simple, actually: If I hadn’t been outraged enough to want a screengrab, I would have left Digg instantly. I’m not going to stick around on a site that is giving me 5% content. no way. The smaller version’s not too bad – at least content there is over 40%… But the next time I spot something large on the top of Digg, I’m gone – and I’ll likely be tempted to not return.