Advertisements

One of the nice things about Real Simple's website is that it doesn't have an overload of ads popping out at you as you scroll through the site. Most of the advertisements live on the right side of the site. They aren't distracting and they don't over power the entire page.

 

Advertisement on the right rail.

Real Simple only has one pop-up ad that appears when you open the site. It occurs when your first visit the home page. It's generally an in-house ad that promotes a subscription to the magazine. The good thing about this is it's easy to close out of the ad quickly. The downside of these types of ads is that they are annoying. I know advertising is what keeps most businesses running next to newsstand sales, but pop-up ads ad nothing to content of the site and discourage readers from wanting to visit more often. Generally, I don't even read what these pop-ups say and especially since this is an in-house ad Real Simple could easily nix the ad to create a better user experience.

Another area with ads is above the navigation bar. This is a hot spot for advertisements. Most of these ads are flash graphics and promote products that Real Simple would write about. 

Advertiement above the navigation.

The last place that I found ads was when they were interspersed throughout galley-like stories. I was flipping through the Daily Finds of "The Best Reusable Bags" and within the story was an ad for Clorox. I've seen ads placed like this before and it's second nature for me to just flip right past it. These types of ads are also annoying, but I know they probably create a good amount of revenue. However, the interesting thing about this ad is that it promotes Real Simple on Twitter and the Clorox product. This sort of advertising technique is a great way to boost sales for the product and drive traffic to Real Simple's Twitter account.

Ad within the story for "The Best Reusable Bags."

Overall, the amount of ads on Real Simple's page is fairly low compared to a lot of the other sites. They don't junk up their page with unnecessary flash graphics that would take away from the feeling a reader gets when reading the magazine or browsing the site.