January 6, 2004

Advertisers not getting the message

I read Trek Today, and TrekBBS — I’m a nerd, let’s move on.

They both have annoy­ing, moving, spin­ing, jump­ing, singing, spit­ting, yelling ads that annoy me and give me a bad impres­sion of the com­pany the ad is for (are you lis­ten­ing adver­tis­ers?!).

I have Mozilla, it can block images and do many other things. So with­out shame, I block the annoy­ing ads and am left with the text ads and the Ama​zon.com part­ner­ship ads — both taste­ful and relevent.

But now, the adver­tis­ers have fired back. This is the first time I’ve seen this, it’s a text ad in an iframe with an annoy­ing back­ground image, which Mozilla can not block.

I like, TrekBBS, and I want to sup­port it — but not by being annoyed.

Now, you’d think the adver­tis­ing net­work, UGO, would have gotten the message.

Let’s see: X Page views with Y annoy­ing ad place­ments, where X < Y means people are dis­abling your annoy­ing ads.

Not the text ads, not the non-​annoying ban­ners, just the moving, spin­ning, coma-​inducing, swirling, etc. ads.

What should we do? Listen to our user’s demands for taste­ful, relevent ads, or… wait, I’ve got it, try and find a way around the browser’s blocks.

By jove, that’s it! Our users must really want annoy­ing ads, and those mali­cious browser makers are bent on ruin­ing us… yes, that’s it.

UGO, et al have I got a deal for you.

Filed under: Web design

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