There were also three online-only outlets included in the sample: Google News, Yahoo News and The Huffington Post (which is now also AOL’s official news channel).

Google News does not have any ads beyond in-house ads promoting its own products. Unlike on some of the legacy news sites, its house ads were not for subscriptions and things users could purchase, but rather for Google services like ways to “personalize” your Google News experience.

Yahoo News and The Huffington Post carried a full array of advertising. Their ads not only looked similar to one another, but also to the category of ads that appeared on legacy news websites.  

Yahoo News and The Huffington Post contained few in-house ads promoting their companies, but mirrored news websites from legacy media in other ways. On both sites, for instance, financial ads were the largest category, accounting for more than a quarter of the ads on The Huffington Post (26%) and 17% on Yahoo News.

Ads from telecom and pharmaceuticals were also sizable categories. One area where The Huffington Post stood out was in job search ads, which ranked second (14% of the ads captured).