Hold The Front Page: Newspaper website's new look is complete

Forgetting trivialities such ad effectiveness (or, well, revenue), The Shropshire Star has come up with a novel way of splitting editorial from advertising. As their Internet and new media sales manager, Tracy Mason explains:

"All the advertising is now on the right hand side of the site which is the commercial arm. We are using the format of column width as in the newspaper so advertisers can understand what they are buying."

Um, yes. Maybe there is some merit in this approach - limited advertising that's always found in the same place. It is definitely refreshing to view a site that is totally devoid of banner advertising, and you could argue that the general lack of other advertising does make the right hand ads more noticeable. This West of England local rag could be charting the course of the online advertising future.