Mobile Tech Today: Interrupting this story

In-text links to advertiser sites break user conventions

The Site

Mobile Tech Today, a free news and reviews online newsletter, is a busy content-rich site which routinely includes linked keywords in the body of its articles. These are indicated both by conventional underscoring and highlighting in blue and by an icon resembling an opened box which sits immediately after the keyword.

Clicking on either the keyword or the icon opens a new, third-party provider’s site in the current browser window. For example, a link from ‘broadband’ in the article ‘Smartphones Are Gaining Ground’ opens the Business section home page of the Sprint site. There is no warning that this is about to happen, nor an explanation of the meaning of the icon. Related Topics and Latest News links are provided at the bottom of articles.

The Takeaway

As a free newsletter, Mobile Tech Today’s business model is clearly based on revenue from advertising, of which there is much in the form of banner ads around its site. This is a well-established model for publishers offline and one that looks a better bet with every report on the increasing vitality of online advertising. However, there must be a risk, in stretching the conventions of in-text linking as far as Mobile Tech Today does, of at the least upsetting the goose that lays the golden eggs.

In-text links are a contentious issue in themselves – many people consider them intrusive per se, others point to frequently inappropriate use. When inserted to spin users away without warning to a technology partner’s or advertiser’s site, and to replace the story with that site, they surely risk turning off the very people they want to connect with.

First published on 05 December, 2006