New web annoyances

Everyone that has been using the web for more than say, three days, knows about how annoying pop-up ads are. Fortunately due to things like the Google Toolbar for IE, and the built-in pop-up blocking of FireFox, Safari, and even IE (after updates) we are now seeing far fewer pop-ups.

But you can't seriously think that advertisers are going to just shrug their shoulders and think "oops, they got us." No, they will do what they always have done - innovate. Innovation is a great thing... usually. But in this case, it just leads to new annoyances. In this case, said annoyances are floaters.

Floaters are essentially the same as a pop-up in that they block the page with their content, but they are actually a part of the page itself. They can be executed in Flash, ActiveX controls (only IE), or just straight HTML/CSS.
Technically there are still ways to block them, but it is going to be a continuing cat and mouse game as the people creating them find ways of still getting them to your screen.

What is interesting is that generally speaking, if you annoy someone with your ad, they are more likely to just want it to go away than they are to actually pay attention to it and be influenced to buy whatever it is being sold. But yet everyday we see/hear that the reason spam is getting so bad is that it actually works.
Well the same thing applies to annoying web advertising as well - they wouldn't do it if it didn't work. I think personally I would never buy something from seeing one of those sorts of things, but there are certainly those who do.
I would be curious to see if those new to the web (and those more clueless about how it and computers in general work) are more likely to buy something from an annoying ad technique than those more technically experienced/savvy. I know in the past when I have raised the point to those who are new to the web that some of the behavior which they are complaining about was largely dueto them just not "getting it", they took great offense to the idea. So it is an area to be careful with when discussing.

On a side note, there are no pop-ups or floaters on this site - if you ever see one on here, then you are infected with spyware and it is putting it in.

Posted by Eric at February 25, 2005 11:40 AM | TrackBack