I used to love 4 things about the BBC website:
- Well-designed interface (elegant and soothing).
- Lightweight webpages, ensuring speedy browsing.
- The quality of journalism was top notch.
- There were no ads whatsoever.
Although the first three still hold true, the fourth one does not. To make things worse, banner ads on BBC actually obstruct the actual article now. The screenshots below make this clear. It can be seen that the article on BBC begins way too low on the webpage (over half of the top portion of the visible area of webpage is non-article portion - the actual article starts far below).
More sensible use of screen space has been made on The New York Times website. The article starts at a comfortably-high point compared to BBC website.
It will be sensible if BBC modifies the interface so that the interface and banner ads do not take so much of visible screen space, that it starts to feel as if the actual article is now an "also present".
Update: A better screenshot from BBC - with more news, zero ads.
Update [27-Sep-16]: This screenshot below, which I took in Apr'11, shows something similar, albeit the extent of intrusiveness is much higher here.
Update [11-Mar-17]: Firstpost, which once was a good website, is now on a clear path to self-destruction, thanks to the insatiable ad-greed of its promoters and Web team.
Update [30-May-18]: Even on the NYT!
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