Hmmm, I thought I had set my browser to block pop-up windows and obnoxious pop-up ads. But there’s a whole new batch of them popping up everywhere I turn on the internet. What the hell?
There is also a new breed of internet advertising that uses flashing and constantly vibrating and dancing words and graphics to grab our attention. I have one policy with advertising like this, and it’s the same one I have with any company that calls me at home on my telephone: I will never ever ever, under any circumstances, ever buy anything from them: NEVER! So they make me look, but they also make it extremely difficult and headache-inducing to read or look at anything online anymore, so I absolutely want to harm them. And I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make me want to buy anything from them. But they made me remember who they are, so I remember not to ever give them any money for any product or service at any time under any circumstances.
This makes me want to look at magazines instead: at least their ads don’t irritate me and give me headaches in a wrong-headed attempt to win my attention! Or is this a new secret strategy being tried by paper newspapers and magazines, advertising fake products in really annoying ways on the internet, designed to make us all abandon the internet and go back to reading paper media? (It just might work, too! Because the new pop-ups are always for internet “magazines”, and the dancing ads are something that can’t occur in paper printed media. So if it’s a conspiracy, it’s perfectly executed!)
So, companies that advertise on the internet: use this tactic at your own risk! You may end up dissolving your own consumer base. And if you do, you have no-one to blame but yourselves! (Well, and your ad agency; but if you don’t know what your own ads look like, then you deserve whatever animosity they earn for you!)
