[Spencer]

The biggest issue with many local newspaper sites is the ads literally make them unreadable.  It's not so much their ad free rivals which lower their readership bit their own greed - prioritising being able to view ads over content.  Ads are a necessary evil but if they make a website unusable people will either ad block or go elsewhere.

I can’t think why anyone would choose to advertise on one of those sites. When your ad is competing against so many others, surely your message is just going to get utterly lost amongst all the commercial clutter. And is an irritating pop-up that a user is desperate to swat away as quickly as possible a great context to build trust in a brand?