Advertisers Thrilled About New Ways To Irritate Readers

from the wrong-direction dept

Wed, Jun 14th 2006 11:22am — Joseph Weisenthal

Though the rise of pop-up blockers is a clear indication that users don't like intrusive advertising, publishers haven't stopped looking for ways to annoy their readers. The trade magazines tend to be chief offenders as they often employ the dreaded dog-ear pullback and other intrusive flash-based ads that take over the screen. Then of course there are the embedded text ads delivered by Intellitxt and others. When you scroll your mouse over certain words, a small ad pops up on the screen. Because these ads look like hyperlinks, they amount to advertising by trickery. But apparently those ads aren't irritating enough as the latest generation brings up an ad with a small video right on top of the text as your mouse runs over the text -- something that Ad Age apparently thinks is a brilliant idea, rather than just incredibly intrusive and annoying. Also, you can add a point for the always-irritating unexpected sound. Seeing as broadcast TV ads are losing their effectiveness on TV, what makes publishers think it's a good idea to embed them into text? Though it may seem smart, in the short run, to chase the highest possible CPM, sites running these ads will ultimately pay for it by degrading the user's experience and eroding the value they offer readers.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

18 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

claire rand, 14 Jun 2006 @ 11:27am

build a better mouse trap?
*sigh* ok peoples who fancys writing a nice little application that is given a list of URLs, and sits running quietly downloading to /dev/null, free bandwidth? put it to good use, download the ads.. don't bother looking at them of course but run the costs up.

oh yes and i can see the next version of firefox etc, developing ways of blocking this sort of rubbish anyway.

like banning 'moving DIV tags' etc, under the same sort of control as it currently has for cookies etc.

eventually they may get the hint, i don't mind sponsored pages, where they actually fund some nice content, but all this crap does is make me turn image loading *off*, and sound *off* and javascript *off* except for sites and domains i trust.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
netcelerator, 14 Jun 2006 @ 12:06pm

The Internet runs ads or ads run the Internet??
[ link to this | view in thread ]
anonymous coward, 14 Jun 2006 @ 12:15pm

advertisers are spending millions and millions on ads that everyone hates? hmmm, how does that work?

i see an ad i hate, click on it, and buy the product? if i hate the ad so much, how do i end up owning the product?

if no one is click on the ads, i really don't think many companies will continue to spend their advertising budgets. that is why advertising is constantly evolving. spend, learn, redefine, spend, learn...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike, 14 Jun 2006 @ 1:30pm

Not so BAD
It is actually not so bad. The text links are usually clearly marked and if you dont want to see it dont mouse over it. Lots of time when i see a link like this i mouse over simply because of curiosity and then usually click away. The point is this ads are not intrusive and they can be easialy hidden and theay are clever solution to always visible banners. Personally I would prefers this type of ads over banner anyday.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ET, 14 Jun 2006 @ 1:43pm

serves a purpose?
While I absolutley, positively HATE any type of ad on the Web, definitely the more intrusive ones, the fact of the matter remains... these ads are what is keeping a lot of things free on the Web. Agreed, for some Web sites, the number of ads and the type of ads are overshadowing the content, but for quite a number of sites, I don't mind having to close and ad left and right to be able to get access to free information I want/need.

Of course, I do agree some of these ads are going a little bit overboard...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael Gersh, 14 Jun 2006 @ 1:47pm

They Know What They Are Doing
So they are so stupid, eh? Advertisers spend a fortune figuring out what works. If you see an ad a few times, you know it is working. Like spam and adware, these things proliferate because enough people DO buy the stuff to pay the freight of the ads.

Hate them all you want, but if the ads fail to work, the internet we all know and love will be gone. Advertising revenues are up a ton, and it only makes the amount and quality of free conrent better. If you don't like it, turn it off. But thank the diety that enough people DO respond to pay for free content for the rest of us.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rational Beaver, 14 Jun 2006 @ 1:52pm

The worst ads, IMO, are the ones where you click on a normal link on the site and then, instead of going right to the page you wanted, you are re-directed to a huge splash page ad that you must look at before going on to your final destination. Thankfully, you can usually skip the ad if you hunt around for the link, but still, that's really, really annoying.

This type of ad recently spawned an evil twin which, instead of the splash page, actually opens a frame and loads another site into it. This is a crime against humanity.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Hagrus, 14 Jun 2006 @ 2:02pm

Not so bad.
Just like in real life, if you let it bug you then it will bug you. Without ads companies would go out of business! Think about it... you probably are not going to take the time to try to find a small store that might have what you're looking for, you'll just go to the big name store that might have what you're looking for because you saw thier ad and you know they exist. Ads are essential for companies, and without companies (which provide jobs) we wouldn't have too much of an ecomomy.

Michael's right, if you can't stand it turn it off!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pete, 14 Jun 2006 @ 2:07pm

I claim prior art on the "intellTXT video sucks" meme:
IntelliTXT Launches (Annoying) Video Ads
[ link to this | view in thread ]
J.R., 14 Jun 2006 @ 3:05pm

I hate advertising at all. Honestly, I know that the bandwidth is purchased and has to be paid for, but I prefer the donation system. A lot of sites struggle along with this, but you have to ask yourself: is the content worth donating money? Most times, the answer is simple: no, no it is not. But sometimes it is worth the money, and in those cases I'm always willing to fob a few bucks to a struggling site I don't want to see go the way of the over-advertised giant. Many sites have ad-supported free services and ad-free premium services. For most news outlets, this is a good idea. Frankly, if it's free, I expect to be advertised to. But I really detest companies that decide the only way to get my dollars is to get into my face. Especially when it's obvious I'm a reader who thinks for himself, if they'd actually bother to see what page it is I'm viewing. I count three ads on this page... and not one of them has any relationship to this. My favorite, though, is the companies that are pop-up blockers that employ pop-ups to advertise...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Valhalla Rising, 14 Jun 2006 @ 3:10pm

While ads of all kinds are widely despised they fuel many markets and employ many of the ppl that hate them. The ads keep anti-adware in business and even anti-adware uses some of the most bothersome ads. I hate the ones that tell you you have an issue and to download thier software to remove the ads they got you to download. Worse is the ones where no matter what button (including the close X) all accept the software. Talk about deception.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
J.R., 14 Jun 2006 @ 3:18pm

Re:
Firefox is your friend. Download it and feel free.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
yossi, 14 Jun 2006 @ 3:41pm

@j.r.
The people who see the popup are the ones who want the popup blocker.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
charlie potatoes, 14 Jun 2006 @ 3:44pm

Forbes on Google home page
you click on a news item on your google home page.. you are whisked to an ad for forbes...which asks u if u want to watch it or go about your business. the fuckers dont know if i want to watch their shit or read what i clicked on??? FUCK YOU TOWEL HEADS AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Jun 2006 @ 4:19pm

Ok people... Does any of you have any idea how expensive is to mantain a website? What about bandwidth costs? Ever wondered why you pay for a service provider and the rest of the web is free?. You hate banners and that's ok, but I bet you don't hate free content. I'm not a banner lover or anything, but please... let's keep things real. Either the advertisers pay for the content or you are.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
mmrtnt (profile), 15 Jun 2006 @ 12:30pm

Firefox + NoScript + Adblock

NoScript
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/
Adblock
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1 0/
Install Firefox, install NoScript and Adblock and these things go away.
One thing to keep in mind, however with NoScript, the sites that you want to use JavaScript on will have to be individually enabled. In my case, it took about a half-dozen times of sitting in front of a web page, repeatedly clicking on the submit button before I remembered I needed to enable JavaScript for that site.
Personally, I only Adblock animated ads because I can't stand things moving when I'm trying to read.
MjM
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jon, 15 Jun 2006 @ 7:03pm

Re: Firefox + NoScript + Adblock
You don't need an extension to block animated ads:

image.animation_mode = none
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sarah, 22 May 2009 @ 5:39am

I used to click on the banner ads on Yahoo!, until they started with the expanding banner ads. It's so annoying I've made it a point not to buy anything from those expanding ads. If I want more information, I'll click on it. Stop giving me a half-page ad about something I probably don't care about anyway!
[ link to this | view in thread ]