Hey, you know you love it, right? Banner ads that expand
over what you’re trying to look at: they rule! And they are especially
delightful if they take a while to do their thing, and they slow your
experience down to a crawl. Great! It’s just like the old pop-up ads we all
hate and block, only these aren’t in a separate window, so they’re totally different and totally awesome! (Right? No?)
I don’t know about you, but whenever an ad does this to me,
I make a mental note to never buy anything from that company. It’s not quite as
bad as being called at home, but it still sucks. And I get that they want to
get their name out there, but surely there must be a way to do it without
making everyone hate them, right? Because, you know, they’re paying a lot of
money for the ability to make us hate them.
I think there’s an easy solution to this problem, but it
would require an entire re-thinking of how Internet advertising operates. How
it works now is that ads get revenue based upon clicks, and so being as
annoying and intrusive as possible is how they expect to get those clicks. I
have even clicked against my will due to the expanded windows jumping in my way
out of nowhere, and they probably, sadly, got money for that, and most likely
do a lot for the same reason: accidental contact or impatience on the part of
the web-surfer. This is bullsh!t. All this does is make people hate brands, and
they have to pay for the privilege to make prospective customers hate them:
lame, and wrong.
Here’s how it ought to work: Websites should charge
companies a flat rate based upon the sites popularity to put an ad on their
site, which should be considered to be a branding opportunity, like having a
brand name on a building or at a sports event. Then, they should build a link
into their little ad that takes people to bigger ads or make interesting media
advertising for that brand if they want to see it. That way, people would get
the brainwashing from the brand ad, but not learn to hate them for their
intrusiveness. As it is, I think it makes people hate them more than anything
else. But in my solution, people would notice the brand name, and then only get
the bigger ads if they were interested.
And what to send them to? Why, I think the real answer is to
send interested parties to expanded advertising experiences like what BMW Films
used to do. TV ads should be available to see on the Internet, but Internet
advertising really should be its own thing, and it ought to be cool, like a
gift or entertainment you can’t get anywhere else. But as it is, it makes me
and all my friends hate the companies. And I’d say that’s likely the opposite
of what they’re looking for as a marketing goal.
