CBS MarketWatch, other sites make viewers watch TV-like ads before viewing content

Surfing through the top online media sites can give you an eyeache. Blimps fly around, ads expand and contract like breathing monsters, videos play unbeckoned. It's all in the name of profitability, and only recently have the big media firms discovered ways to get into the black online. They can charge for archives or crosswords or certain premium services like video. Or they can pummel you with ads to keep everything free. A combination of these cruel and unusual measures -- alongside draconian staff cuts -- have paved the road to profitability.

Recently, top news sites have started testing the "intromercial," a brief TV-like ad that plays before you even see the content of the home page. Financial kingpin CBS MarketWatch started testing them in the fourth quarter of 2002, with just one per month, then upped that to two or three a month. Now, you can expect to see an intromercial when visiting the CBS MarketWatch home page for the foreseeable future.

Larry Kramer, CBS MW's gregarious founder and CEO, told me that they're getting as many compliments as complaints about the ads, with an additional feature allowing people to replay certain creative ads. Kramer's site and most other major media sites that employ intromercials are careful to limit a reader's exposure to the ad -- just one viewing per 24 hours. So when you return to the site, you go directly to content. Plus, good etiquette includes having a prominent mute button or "skip this ad" feature.

"We were very sensitive about the user experience," Kramer said. "We were nervous about interrupting them or being intrusive. This format allows us to give advertisers a big palette for their creative, while not interruping a user on the site. We're really taking a page out of TV, by having ads play before you see the show."

Therein lies the rub. Many online media sites have had TV-envy from the start, wishing they could offer beautiful moving pictures to advertisers. Limited technology and slow dial-up connections were always an obstacle, but that's changing rapidly as broadband proliferates and technology advances. Online publishers drool most over TV ad revenues, and perhaps this is a way to push bargain-basement online ad prices up. CBS MW charges a premium for intromercials, but they pay off for advertisers, garnering five to 10 times better response rates than banner ads, according to Kramer.

eBay does it

While CBS MarketWatch is basically training its readers to get used to seeing an intromercial with the first site visit per day, other sites are playing with fire by using the format intermittently. Washingtonpost.com ran a series of MSN ads last year as intromercials and is now running eBay ads in a similar way before you get to the front page of the Post's site. There's something jarring about these eBay ads, especially in their clunky look.

Kramer said that publishers need to be selective about the brands they spotlight in this fashion, and make sure it's high quality advertising creative.

Kevin Pursglove, eBay's senior director of communications, said he didn't know who created the Washingtonpost.com ads, but added that rich media intromercial ads were part of a series of tests the online auction company was trying out to reach new customers and re-energize inactive customers. "We've tested virtually every medium in the past four years, and we had never tried rich media before," Pursglove said. "We're analyzing results day by day, and are doing it cautiously. The bottom line is that it has to be good for our community or it has no value for us."

Publishers such as Kramer say the intromercial is less obtrusive because it happens before the user is immersed in a site's content. But not everyone gets excited about replaying intromercials. Consultant Vin Crosbie said he has stopped going to CBS MW because of the ads, and sees a long-term problem with disenfranchising part of a site's readership. "The issue is that most publishers have a dual clientele -- readers and advertisers," he told me. "Publishers usually err on the side of the advertisers, and that alienates readers. These ads are certainly intrusive, and they certainly turn off readers."

Crosbie, president and managing partner of Digital Deliverance, said publishers shouldn't put up roadblocks for readers online, where there are still plenty of other choices for news. If someone doesn't like an annoying ad, they can go elsewhere. Still, for people looking for a particular Washington Post article, they will have to suffer through the intromercial -- or click the "skip" button. "I'd hate to think we're in a medium like early TV where publishers can drive users to eat the dog food,"  Crosbie said.

What not to do

Don Marshall, director of communications for Washingtonpost.com, said the eBay ads have brought as many complaints as the earlier MSN series. That's probably a result of doing the ads in a stutter-step manner. Washingtonpost.com has not run intromercials since last year, then ran them aggressively over the past couple weeks. Marshall said there will always be a core of readers who complain every time there's a new type of advertising. But that, he said, is part of doing business on the Web.

"We don't want to force it down their throat," he said. "But then again, we have to get money in order to maintain one of the best journalism operations online. We review the ads that run, make sure they meet our goals and that they don't disrupt the user experience. MSN and eBay are not out for a cheap buck on the Web. It's not good for us or the advertiser if it doesn't work."

Marshall said the key with intromercials is that the creative should be interesting, providing a quick, powerful experience -- and that readers can close the ad easily. Other sites take different approaches. Forbes.com has run a version of the intromercial, but never allows its logo to be covered up. CNET has done it frequently on its GameSpot site, but not as much on its tech sites. It plans to implement more intromercials, but only if they are tech-oriented and announce something new.

"We won't ever do ads that cover up content," said Greg Mason, CNET's executive vice president of sales and marketing. "We will do creative that flies from ad space to ad space but not something covering meaningful content. And no pop-unders ever." Of course, what is kosher with one publisher doesn't always pass muster with others. Mason said the Weather.com site and its panoply of dancing ads "drives me nuts."

The New York Times has a policy against running intromercials or any ads that introduce sounds on its Web site, though it does allow a limited number of interstitial ads between viewing pages. Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital, said the format isn't always the determining factor for what turns off readers. "The volume of complaints has never been unacceptable for any ads we've run, but much of the negative feedback could be attributed to the creative execution of the ads and not the format," he told me.

When surfing through news sites such as CBS MarketWatch, Nisenholtz said he will close ads if he doesn't like the creative.

So, is the intromercial the wave of the future, something that readers will have to get used to? Crosbie hopes not, but Kramer thinks others will follow his lead at CBS MW. And Kramer sees a higher purpose to the intro ads. "I see advertising as content," he said. "I'd like to see these ads becoming like the fashion ads that run in The New York Times Magazine -- considered as art." And he does just that, by maintaining an online gallery of intromercials that have played on CBS MW.

They might not be art, but rich media ads have proven to be less annoying for users when compared to the twin evils of pop-up ads and pop-under ads. GartnerG2 found that 78 percent of respondents thought pop-ups were very annoying, while only 43 percent rated interstitials (similar to intromercials) very annoying. And that's close to the 38 percent who rated TV ads as very annoying. Meaning? Finally, Web publishers have figured out a way to annoy people at the same level that TV broadcasters do.