In my humble little opinion the original intention of the web was to be a worldwide free medium to share documents and discuss idea. So far this ideal has been somewhat achieved but there is something that is threatening the ideal.
I have recently stopped following some blogs and websites, not because I find their content irrelevant or or lackluster, but because my experience whilst on these sites has become so tarnished by advertising that I can’t read the content. Some of these sites are industry leaders in breaking news for the technology and IT worlds, but if I cannot read the content I am not going to bother coming back.
Now I am not saying that advertising is all bad, most of these blogs and websites depend on it to remain publishing. However as the average user learns to automatically and involuntarily tune out the distractions, advertisers keep coming up with new innovative methods of annoyance.
I am at breaking point.
First we had JavaScript pop ups loading advertising pages up continually in your face and these were easily stopped by blocking JavaScript. These were soon replaced by flash banners normally at the top or sides of a website, which flash, scream or try to get you to shoot a duck.
Oh yes the ones that really drive me mad are the holding page adverts, where if you don’t have a cookie for a particular site you have to sit and wait for 10 seconds while several adverts are paraded in front of your face.
Now we have the CSS/Ajax pop up windows asking stupid questions like
“As a valued visitor please take a moment to tell us what you think about our site, and then if you wouldn’t mind visiting one or two of our sponsors…”
So I am quite certain that the vast majority of Internet users will agree with me here, but by charging less and less for more intrusive adverts, the only long term success that will be gained will be in driving readers away, not wealth.
The web is now one of the most powerful mediums on the planet, surely there is a better way of generating revenue whilst still maintaining a meaning?
Agree with everything you have said here, while I understand why some people feel the need to include advertising on their site, it should never be at the expense of the users browsing experience.
Although I agree there is too much advertising on many sites I think that online advertising has yet to mature – especially in terms of content advertisements. I was on a site the other day and they’d got it right with a simple skyscraper on the left, google content ads in the centre at the top main body left for the website’s text.
User choice is such a major determining factor in web ranking that if visitors genuinely have a reduction in user experience the site will start to drop.
As an Adwords user – it’s more frustrating when you can see the trends of these content ads being clicked on and false submissions being made by the owners of the websites they appear on – but that’s another blog entirely!