ESPN.com’s year-long revamp is finally ready today and set for its formal debut on January 5. Aside from emphasizing video and smarter search, as the company has talked about over the past few months in previews, execs at the Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) sports unit tell the NYT that the site’s overarching ethos is all about reducing ad clutter. As John Skipper, ESPN’s EVP for content, explains: “If we are frustrating people, they’re not going to spend as much time as we want on the site.” Some of the key changes include:

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—The revamped home page has done away with the big block of 36 links at the top, and reduced it to 19 tabs for Fantasy (a rollover unveils about 16 sub-categories), NFL (which unfolds to offer eight links that take users to the “scoreboard” or “blog network”) and a “More” tab, which has 20 links to areas such as Olympics, poker and cricket news.

—With fewer links taking up space on the site, advertisers are getting more display options. The most popular pages will feature eight spots for advertisers, instead of the usual three. Next month, ESPN.com will add a new ad choice for video that will largely be targeted to movie studios. And in a sign that Ford believes it will survive the current financial crisis gripping its Detroit competitors, it has signed up as the revamped site’s initial sponsor.

—ESPN.com is also creating more spaces for user customization, such as personalizing what scores are displayed.

—SAI: The redesign comes as traffic at the sports site has remained flat year-over-year. According to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR), ESPN.com attracted 21 million uniques in November, compared to 22 million a year before. Meanwhile, visits to the site fell 16 percent, according to Quantcast measurements, which recorded 121 million visits last month versus 145 million in November 2007. An ESPN rep feels these numbers only tell part of the story, pointing to Nielsen NetRatings’s figures showing the site up 33 percent in total minutes, as well as a 12 percent rise in uniques and average visits and a 32 gain in pageviews in November, year-over-year.