An Evaluation of AdAge.com
by Lisa Youngclaus
Waiting for the office copy of Ad Age may not be as scintillating as it used to be. AdAge.com packages the latest advertising industry news in a real time format with lots of other bells and whistles, just a click away. From the familiar graphics to the popular columns and critiques, virtually everything translates to the online world. In fact, the innovative interaction and first class graphics may make the “read” even better.
Background Summary and Target Audience
AdAge.com is an advertising industry news website providing stories of interest to professionals in the advertising, marketing, and media sectors. The real-time website is an additional platform to the parent, Advertising Age, a news weekly magazine which has served the industry for more than 75 years. The site is updated with breaking news stories and provides an extensive log of relevant content and links to other marketing and media sources. The site also sponsors multiple daily electronic newsletters with a variety of specific focuses which advertising professionals may receive upon request.
Advertising Age Weekly Magazine (Source: Wikipedia)
Home page with two-column layout (Source: www.adage.com)
Evaluation
Overall, the site offers complete up-to the-minute coverage of a vast industry and successfully transferring its authority, from the trusted news weekly into the digital format. Important news and stories of interest are presented with the familiar graphical look and feel of the Advertising Age print publication. While highly functional and familiar in its appeal to advertising and marketing executives, some pages within the site become too complex, perhaps, due in part to the presence of advertising within the site. Of course, this is the business the site is promoting, so the advertising is a “must”. Given that necessity, some simplification of layout and design and consistent use of navigation elements could enhance the use of space and entice professionals to engage in the many layers of information created and acquired for this site.
Home page and page layout
The homepage reflects the familiar face of the Advertising Age news weekly magazine. The weekly and website design both utilize the signature white background with the Advertising Age logo underlined by the blue bar, to signal the Brand identity of this iconic publication. A two -column layout allows sufficient space to highlight a few lead news stories surrounded by a decent amount of white space. The design incorporates adjacent pictures for each new story with bold headlines and appropriate sub-heads to give the viewer a concise and clear understanding of each story. The option to immediately “click” to “FULL ARTICLE” is highlighted in red.
The site uses an offset, left-hand navigation panel, with good proportion to the two-column layout, categorized and detailed with small arrows to encourage navigating to the department of choice. The navigation panel provides a quick summary of and shortcuts to the site’s content, regular columns and sections. Graphically, the navigation menu is clean and legible with a dark grey background with reverse type.
Upon scrolling down the homepage, the format shifts to a three–column layout and becomes increasingly cluttered. While well organized, the same design elements delivered in the two-column layout, now become crowded into three columns with smaller font. The result is an increasing level of distraction and tendency to overwhelm any single story’s importance.
Home page continued with three-column layout. (Source: www.adage.com)
In both the two-column and three-column spaces, advertising is positioned in the far right column and in the lower portion of the left-side navigation bar, and anchored at the bottom of the page. In general, the ads are graphically appealing and attention–getting, but at times can make the page appear too cluttered. The best appearance of advertising is when the page focuses on a single advertiser (e.g. Yahoo). By utilizing a series of three to four ad spaces, using common color and design, the advertisings’ disruptiveness is minimized. In fact, when featured, the dramatic purple Yahoo ads become attractive design elements on the page and showcase good web advertising, which is appropriate for the site. Conversely, where smaller ads for multiple companies are featured and used to excess, the result is a cluttered effect.
Navigation and Content
Navigation throughout the site is fairly easy due to many layers of detail enabling the user to select the desired content. Within the two primary sections (Home and Columns), the navigation bar remains to the left, highlighting the current location, which enables the user to know where they are and how to get elsewhere. Further, the subsequent pages are designed in the same fashion using repetitive and consistent design elements. These pages can also stand alone.
While the first two main sections on the Navigation bar work well as detailed above, when visiting additional sections such as the Blogs and Pods, Resources, Branded Content and Services sections, the navigation bar disappears, page design changes and there is no tab or any ability to return to the Home page. This is very frustrating creates the effect of feeling lost and no way to return home without use of the “back” button. Further, in the final three sections, Resources, Branded Content and Services, in addition to lack of a Home return, the Advertising Age logo is also disappears, contributing to the “where am I effect” which risks encouraging the user to “give up” and leave the site.
Content is extensive and well organized. Additionally, links to even more content can be found at the bottom of the homepage. Frankly, I find the content a little too extensive and am better served by the daily Ad Age newsletter, which gives a brief overview of top stories. However, having worked in many aspects of the industry, in order for the site to adequately serve the diversity of professionals, the extensive content is appropriate.
Writing Quality and Tone
News stories are generally written in the inverted pyramid style delivering key points with solid headlines, hard-working sub-heads and informative first paragraphs to signal important facts quickly and easily. Articles are not too lengthy and can be scanned for more detail. Due to the subject matter, the writing style and tone of the articles is creative and fun, lending some excitement to each subject with a contemporary flair. A consistent use of clear visuals with each news story adds to the graphic impact and visual interest of the site.
Another informative and fun aspect to the site is the “3 Minute Ad Video” which appears on the home page and subsequent top news story pages. This “window” is not only a great informational tool offering a wide variety of relevant content, but it contributes to the site’s “cutting edge” tone.
Summary and Suggested Improvements
The site has many strengths, as discussed above:
· Excellent branding and recognition from the parent platform
· Relevant, timely content for the target audience
· Excellent consistency in design in most sections
· Easy navigation in key sections
· Strong, detailed organization
· Solid writing quality
· Appropriately creative, contemporary tone
However, a clear opportunity for improvement exists by improving the consistency of the site:
· Maintaining use of white space and the less-cluttered two-column design.
· Retaining the left hand navigation bar throughout the pages for a sense of place.
· Retaining the ability on all pages to return “home”.
· Consistent treatment of advertising, focusing on one sponsor per page, whenever possible, for maximum impact and minimum clutter, as with the Yahoo ads on the homepage.
The website reflects the needs of the industry perhaps more than the printed iconic publication. By utilizing the technology of the internet, the industry can be experienced firsthand, beyond print to video and beyond. Instead of seeing a storyboard and script of the hottest new campaign, just click here and watch it.
Revision Note: Revisions include your corrections and suggestion to add a new headline and intro and closing paragraphs.
