I was just checking out the new LATimes.com redesign and apart from its striking blog-like look, I noticed another feature that made it different from other news sites.  The ads seemed much less prominent in size and number than I’m accustomed to at other newspaper Web sites.  It piqued my interest that the change was that drastic that I immediately felt it with a quick visual scan of the page.  I decided to do a little comparison of the LA Times new Web site to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in terms of ad space and units on the home page to see if my initial reaction was right.  It turns out my eyes did not deceive me.

Some findings:

• The new LA Times Web site has 34% fewer home page pixels dedicated to ads then the WSJ and 21.5% fewer than the New York Times
• The new LA Times home page has fewer than half the ad units of the NYT and just a touch more than 60% of the WSJ
• In total ad space (in square pixels) the LA Times has slightly more than the NYT, but the total size of the page drops the percentage of real estate drastically
• The new LA Times home page is 13% bigger than the WSJ home page and 22% bigger than the NYT home page

Here is a comparison:

Los Angeles Times

Ad Space: 311,239 sq. pix
Full Page: 5,596,353 sq. pix
Ads: 5.56%

New York Times

Ad Space: 308,513 sq. pix
Full Page: 4,347,246 sq. pix
Ads: 7.10%

Wall Street Journal

Ad Space: 408,635 sq. pix
Full Page: 4,849,920 sq. pix
Ads: 8.43%

What does it mean?

It’s tough to say right off the bat of course, because the LA Times could be planning on new ad units that aren’t currently live.  They may want to break in the site and get feedback before crowding the user experience with ad units.  However, if this is a rather final design and implementation then it is quite a shocking reduction in potential ad revenue from Web traffic for the LA Times.  We all know that online ad revenues aren’t propping up these papers, but is it so bad in some cases that 20% less ad real estate is an acceptable loss? (Or as Chris Anderson likes to say “too cheap to meter?”)  Perhaps someone with more insight can delve into this; but at first look it seems like an awful lot of screen real estate committed to content (which is great for the user) with a much lesser emphasis on monetizing that traffic with ads (not great for the LA Times, unless of course they’re making it up elsewhere).

What do you think?

Some disclaimers:

• I didn’t count other revenue generating areas such as job searches and real estate searches, etc. because it’s too hard to know what’s a rev share and what isn’t.
• I did count the Yellow Pages box on LA Times because that was a fairly obvious ad unit. If you take it out it makes the numbers even more startling.
• I did this quickly so I’m sure I’m missing some pixels here and there; but I believe the trend holds.
• I didn’t have the time or inclination to do internal pages of the sites.
• I’m not a math geek – feel free to pummel my math
• You can see images of the home pages with the ad units I counted for the LA Times, WSJ, NYT (click the thumbnail for larger image)

LA Times	NY Times	WSJ