When Advertising Drives People Away
Posted February 18th, 2009 by adminAdvertising is a necessary evil. I understand its purpose, and for the most part am thankful the ad revenue model exists. Not because of all of the amazing crap I get to learn about that I absolutely do not need, but because it allows me to enjoy a wider selection of everything from television shows to websites and blogs.
This particular rant is focused on the web. I firmly believe that ads can be done in such a way that I can view them (and by view I mean completely ignore them) and still have a great experience on the site. I’ve even witnessed it. Take digg.com for example - they have ads, but they stay the hell out of my way. I appreciate that. Thanks Digg.
Now, let’s look at some serious offenders….like weather.com. This site should be THE place to go for weather information. It should be elegant, informative, and a joy to visit. Instead, it’s a cesspool of shitty ads. The offenses here are many, but the worst is the fact that I physically cannot search for my local weather without closing an ad window for Mentos. Unacceptable. I’m better off going to Yahoo and looking at weather.com weather without this particular bullshit….or better yet use their API to make my own weather site.
Along the same vein of crappiness is ketv.com. While the site doesn’t take advantage of popups, it does have an insane ad to content ratio. In addition to just being a bad idea, the “weather grid” includes ads interspersed with the functionality. Oh yeah, that’s in addition to the amazingly poorly designed sidebar and footer ads. Did I mention that these are all for the same company? Awesome.
I don’t know about anyone else, but once an advertiser gets in my face….like in a popup or allowing their ad to be placed 87 times on the same page, I don’t want to do business with them anymore. For me, it’s like the virtual version of the “hard sell.” I’ve never been a fan in real life, and I can’t say I like it any better online. Suffice it to say that if I need a heating and cooling guy, I will not be calling Thermal Services and Mentos is not going to be “the freshmaker” for me anytime soon.