When will the insanity in banner advertising stop. Over the past couple of weeks every time I visit CNN.com or MSNBC.com I get assaulted by the biggest most annoying banner ads I have ever seen.
This complete disregard for the readers experience tells me that the companies involved know nothing on how to properly engage audiences. I have never used ad blocking software but ads such as these are driving me towards installing ad blocking software for the first time.
I sure hope the media properties are getting a premium on these sorts of ads because the goodwill that they are losing is significant.
I recently hit a site where the ad had a soundtrack.
It had a Silence button, but every time you ran the mouse over the ad, the soundtrack would turn on again.
And recently, on the same site (msnbc, Mostly Silly News Broadcast Network), they are eating into real estate by using the bottom 1/3 of the screen for a toolbar, which takes 2 clicks to minimize, and some controls on the right side. And then if you actually find an article that is of some interest, they’ve added a “Show more text” link that just hides the text. It doesn’t do a thing for bandwidth, as the entire article is there.
Todd, keep your site clean! I’m about 30 seconds away from never going to MSNBC again!
This is another reason that I have a flash blocker installed.
The website owners only have themselves to blame if the experience is turning people off…