Why Are Ads So Hated (continued)

I have long been a proponent of online advertising and I think its the definitive revenue model for most web-based businesses. I run ads on this blog and believe its the right thing to do. But I've noticed a lot of irritation with advertising lately and wrote a blog post recently asking Why Are Ads So Hated? I got a ton of comments explaining exactly why.

I don't mind ads that are not intrusive. Text ads on the sidebar, banners, even ads below the post are fine with me.

But there is kinds of online advertising that I do not like. Popups were annoying and I am glad they are largely a thing of the past. The splash page that you have to "skip" to get to the page you really want is irritating too.

The most irritating ads are the ones that interfere with what you want to do. And for some unknown reason Rhapsody is running an ad for T-Mobile right now that literally makes it impossible to use their search field for roughly 30 seconds while "grandma" hangs over the edge of the screen. Of course you can close the ad, but the sheer stupidity of this ad is mind boggling. Can you imagine Google dangling Grandma over their search field? Check it out.

I use T-Mobile (my mobile carrier) and Rhapsody all the time. They are brands I have an existing relationship with. And they are pissing me off. Not smart.

Comments

[uday]

good points Fred.

Also, I wonder if it will be possible in online advertising to NOT target NEW customer campaigns at EXISTING customers and save big bucks there!

I see a great market for such enablers in campaign management that could be stitched with existing online advertising machines.

[CoryS]

After attending ad:tech in NYC, I can say that 'monetizing your traffic' was the most popular phrase mentioned by the attendees. Moreover, one of the CEO's of a prominent ad start up said in his booth, "this is frothy, an environment that feels almost like the late 90's".

While the web 2.0 conference sounds as if it is feeling passe (even the New York Times ran an article on Web 3.0 today), the moves of mass marketers into the web arena are anything but. Your points on intrusion are dead on, and there are some great technologies that are trying to combine content with a smart advertising platform. I think there's more possible options to be leveraged to cover branding goals of the Advertising Mag top 100 (great resource, http://adage.com/datacenter).

uday - completely agree that the standard plug in model of web advertising to all is less beneficial than anon v. repeat v. loyal visitors.

There's a lot to be done to connect Madison Avenue/NYC to Silicon Valley.

[joe]

I don't like ad clutter, I don't like irrelevant ads and I don't like ads that interupt. Another problem I see is that providers inflate the value of their content beyond what readers believe it's worth. That's my answer to why ads are so hated.

On the other hand, I don't mind (in fact, I like) the Salon adveretising model where I have to watch the ad to read the article. It makes the ad deal explicit, which is more honest. And it offfers the option to subsribe ad free to one of the best values around (you get print subscriptions to Wired, The New York Review of Books & The Week, and online subscriptions to Salon and The New Republic for $35).

As to grandma, yes, I agree it's stupid and I'm annoyed by such ads too. I expect they'll learn that offending visitors is a bad idea. Then again, spam is still effective. And that's because even some smart people make the dumb decision to click through.

[Mark Thomson]

What? Real Networks annoying people with their scummy practices? I don't believe it...

/sarcasm

[Drew Meyers]

Fred- I totally agree with you- I hate the ads that interfere with things I am trying to accomplish. I think these types of advertising will slowly die out just as pop-ups did because sites will realize they are losing visitors.

Cory S- I disagree with your comment that spam is effective. Once I realize something is spam, I delete it (if its e-mail) or immediately leave the page (if on a web site). But maybe that is just me.

[John Dodds]

I'm not sure if they are a thing of a past -I've noted an increase in recent months and some months back I blogged about opening an email account and almost going in to shock upon hearing the whine of a failing hard disc. It turned out to be the buzz of an advertising bee that opened automatically and was incredibly intrusive. I've also encountered more of the screen covering ads you describe - and all this with pop-up blocker enabled.

My personal wish is that all of it would go away once advertsiers realise that increasingly people will ignore it, but sadly Drew the reality is that spam does work - if it didn't it wouldn't exist.

[John Dodds]

I'm not sure if they are a thing of a past -I've noted an increase in recent months and some months back I blogged about opening an email account and almost going in to shock upon hearing the whine of a failing hard disc. It turned out to be the buzz of an advertising bee that opened automatically and was incredibly intrusive. I've also encountered more of the screen covering ads you describe - and all this with pop-up blocker enabled.

My personal wish is that all of it would go away once advertsiers realise that increasingly people will ignore it, but sadly Drew the reality is that spam does work - if it didn't it wouldn't exist.

[Leigh]

I worked for an Ad Agency that did one of the first 'intrusive' ad campaigns in '98 for the launch of the Chevy Tracker. It was a scavenger hunt across a series of partner websites that had a Chevy Tracker fly across the page. We thought it was brilliant...We even had a Tracker flying across a Ford Focus banner (I still have the screen shot somewhere) and since the technology was so new the response rates were staggering. Cool. New, interesting, different, cut through the clutter. Did the job an ad is suppose to do. One problem.

All of sudden ALL our clients and prospective clients wanted something flying across the screen. Imagine, a world where chocolate bars and tampons are flying across your screen while you are trying to get directions to dinner!

Our creative director simply refused to repeat our offense much to the chagrin of the Agency president. He even went so far as to make the tech guy get rid of the code never to be used again.

About a year later we notice a new company selling its wears to all the Agencies around town. Its soul purpose was to create campaigns of things flying across web pages. Omg…what had we done?….and they were used by just about everyone…except us.

I just wanna say, for my part in contributing to this sorry state of affairs, I sincerely apologize. But the truth is, I don’t think it would have mattered any way.

Mass intrusive campaigns are and will continue to be created by mass marketers.

They simply can’t help themselves.