This Is Why The Internet Sucks: Mediaite Edition

"This Is Why The Internet Sucks" is our semi-regular look at why those "Around The Web" sidebars are so terrible. Sure, they generate some revenue. But if you're hoping to build a reputation for being a responsible media outlet, including links to all sorts of misleading and/or low-quality content seems like a high price to pay.

Today we look at this Mediaite story about a GOP tweet featuring a drunken Beto O'Rourke. Mediaite's pages are advertising heavy, even for a entertainment/politics/pop culture web site. This page has *14* 14 spots as well as 4 of those semi-contextual "Around The Web" sidebars. Sure the headlines are catchy, but how accurate are the teases and what quality content is Mediaite promoting?

We're going to click through the three links included in the "Around The Web" sidebar shown in the screenshot above and see where we end up.

"Pole Vaulter Allison Stokke Is Finally Talking About The Photo That Changed Her Life" links to a story that does indeed focus on Allison Stokke. Which in the world of contextual sidebars is considered a win. But the subject promoted in the headline never really gets addressed, since the piece is actually *25* separate pages of two-sentence facts about Stokke. Many of which look to be nothing more then slightly tweaked facts from her Wikipedia page. So on the upside, the link actually does go to a story about the celebrity mentioned. Even though the story itself is pretty useless to everyone except the web site that is able to convince suckers...err...readers...to click through 25 times hoping to read the story that was being promoted in the headline.





Next up is headline #2: "Clint Eastwood's Statement Has Fans Of Donald Trump In Disbelief." Aside from the awkward wording of the headline, the link goes to the page below, which has nothing to do with Clint Eastwood:





Okay, well maybe that was just a simple mistake. The links are probably generate automatically anyway. So let's check our headline #3: "Barron Trump Moved To Special School Over His Alarming IQ." I'm not going to try and speculate about how anyone's IQ can be "alarming," but the link goes to the page below. Which never mentions Barron Trump, although at least it is Presidential IQ-related.



Aside for the usability issues involved with clogging web pages with so much stuff, there's also the bigger problem. There are a number of reasons why digital ads are less successful. But one of the primary reasons is that readers don't trust the ads they're being shown. They don't believe the accuracy of the links they are clicking on and trading marginal revenue for a hit to a web site's credibility seems like a high price to pay. Not only does your site seems less credible, readers are less likely to engage with any ad on the site. Which leads to a downward spiral of more crappy ads, less engagement, repeat.