Why do online news sites post articles over multiple pages?

December 10, 2009 3:59 AM

Why do online magazines/news sites post articles over multiple pages?

You find an interesting headline, you click through to read it and are allowed to read a couple of paragraphs, before being invited to click through to page 2 of 5.

A quick survey of my friends found that nobody likes this. They regard it as irritating and entirely unnecessary.

Why is it done? To increase the number of clicks? To ensure that you view more advertisements?

posted by jonesor to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: Ad revenue. Each pageview counts as a unique view of ads on that page, which is how many publications charge for advertising on their pages. There might also be an interest in keeping visitors on the site longer. Having a lower bounce rate (people who leave after viewing only one page) and having a longer average user visit time both would go a long way toward convincing advertisers that said publication's pages are a good place for their ads.
posted by msbrauer at 4:07 AM on December 10, 2009

Page views. The more advertising you see, the more money the site makes.
posted by Wroksie at 4:07 AM on December 10, 2009

Best answer: Why is it done? To increase the number of clicks? To ensure that you view more advertisements?

This. It's about as clever as the <> HTML tag or having a 'Netscape Navigator ready!' button on your site, but some newspaper and magazine sites seem to think it's clever. For future reference, if you click the 'print this article' button it usually goes on one page. This is handy both for this and for when sites have very large articles and so are split over several pages (the New Yorker, for example).
posted by jaffacakerhubarb at 4:09 AM on December 10, 2009 [2 favorites]

What amuses me is that sites which purport to attract tech-savvy web users, who are more likely to have installed ad-blocking software, nonetheless use this multiple page format in their long-form articles.

I guess the ad revenue is dependent upon the number of clicks and not whether the ad actually appears on the end user's screen.
posted by dfriedman at 4:13 AM on December 10, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks jaffacakerhubarb - that's a good tip. Armed with 'print this article' and Readability I'm a happy bunny again.
posted by jonesor at 4:25 AM on December 10, 2009 [2 favorites]

Best answer: This may also be a holdover from early days of web design for some folks. I've known a few 'old-school' web devs (if old-school can be applied to folks that got their big start in the late 90's) that absolutely refuse to think of a page as more than 'x' pixels long (x being roughly one screen's height in their preferred resolution). Back when we all had dial-up 7 single screens that all loaded relatively quickly were supposed to be better than one long screen that took a lot longer to load. Side effect of this, you have sites (major magazines, esp.) that grew accustomed to having 'x' pageviews. Cutting down the number of pages cuts down the number of ad impressions, cutting down the bucks.
posted by pupdog at 4:32 AM on December 10, 2009 [2 favorites]

I use the repagination extension to load multi-page articles (or search results) all on one page. (Also: Holy crap Readability is amazing.)
posted by Jairus at 5:33 AM on December 10, 2009

At one time, the conventional web design wisdom said that people didn't want to do a whole lot of scrolling to read an article. Also, presenting someone with a wall of text can stimulate a tl;dr response.
posted by Jart at 6:19 AM on December 10, 2009

It also lets them track how many people actually read the whole article.
posted by smackfu at 6:25 AM on December 10, 2009

This is a beneficial strategy even for sites that attract many users who use ad blockers. Webpage clicks do not necessarily determine revenue (ie, there is no payment if the ad is never shown), but ad rates often are. So, a site that can demonstrate popularity through clicks can charge higher rates for at least some of its ads.

However, I would encourage everyone who uses adblockers to turn them off for their favorite sites anyway.
posted by lesli212 at 8:15 AM on December 10, 2009

A lot of it is due to ad revenue, but believe it or not, some people actually like pagination. I think it's weird, too; I'd rather just use the mousewheel, myself. But take an informal survey of people you know --especially older people-- and you just may be surprised.
posted by Afroblanco at 8:30 AM on December 10, 2009