Cleveland.com: Click Whores
- Fred
- Jun 27
- 1 min read
The computer mouse on my desk is from the late 1990's. With my cochlear implant, I can now hear that mouse click better than, arguably, any time in my entire life.
Click
Click
Click
Click
Click
Click
Click
Click
Click
Click
Click
<AARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!>
But you know who loves those clicks? cleveland.com
All websites love clicks? Not as much as cleveland.com does.
Cleveland.com's business model was, before yesterday, to present the news to you on a template shared by Advance Local platforms. "Free Stories" and "Locked Stories." I always tried to discern what exactly made a story free vs. locked, but I'm convinced that it's a random formula.
Then, yesterday, I noticed no stories were locked. Well, that doesn't seem like cleveland.com, they don't do anything so your visit is a friendlier experience.
You see those yellow lines? They're still locked stories.
In a year, cleveland.com went from content worth paying for, to tricking you into reading their narratives.
I speculate locked stories were getting considerably less clicks, so now you go to the story so they get the click, but you don't always get the story. That drives internal numbers for advertisers without doing any more work.
Well, at least until less people stop going to your website.
But, again, I have no one to blame but myself. I cannot ween myself from that local corporate teet.
Maybe cleveland.com just forgot to lock their stories like sometimes I forget to lock my car.
Kind of unrelated:
How few? According to Pew Research: 1%
Good luck to cleveland.com with their new business model.
Comments