Advertising Creepiness

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 9:35 PM -0800 11/7/98, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>Seems to me that it would have been just as easy for "believer" to send the
>URL to the story as the whole thing. Same with ol'VZ.
>
>Not only is it in poor taste, but it means less people will read the
>article on wired.com, which is what pays the rent.
>

Myself, I try to mostly just snip out a few paragraphs of a story and
comment on them, fair use and all.

However, Declan's point about "what pays the rent" brings up an obvious
point: does _anybody_ look at those damned banner ads?

This is the new "blind spot"...that foveal region about a third of the way
down a Web page screen that has dancing icons, "click on me" junk, and
corporate logos. My guess is that nearly all of us skip this junk
completely, and I think marketing studies will someday confirm this. (There
have been tantalizing reports in places like the "Wall Street Journal" that
basically almost nobody sees these ads, but the full message hasn't sunk
in.)

And the advertising creeps are getting even creepier. Intel was running a
banner ad that looked like a typical Mac or Windows error/alert box,
something like "Click Here to Resume Operation." Creepy. And annoying.

And even my current favorite search engine, Metacrawler, now has banner ads
scattered throughout the search results. Tonight's ad (they change
frequently, of course) even looked like a *search script*! A field for
entering text and then an OK button...I didn't try it, but it was obviously
an attempt to mislead people--embedding a search script inside a search
result. (It was a "fake search script" to "Find people just like you," from
"PlanetAll.com")

And the common pages--Wired, Yahoo, Excite, Dejanews, .....--devote the
left third to junky promotions, the top fourth to their damned name
("Metacrawler" in 40-point type), and then scatter banned ads across a
third of what's remaining.

It's not uncommon for only 2-3 search results to come back on a screen of
1024 x 768.

Declan's own site, Wired.com, runs junk across the top, junk on the left
side, junk on the right side, and doesn't even use the screen real estate.
His story on Y2K, for example, is crammed into about a column inch or two
in the center.

This is what we've come to. Beautiful high resolution screens with junk
filling them.

(Yes, I tried the utilities which purport to flush banner ads, but they
didn't work well (long delays, cruftiness).)

Friends of mine routinely turn off all graphics, a point I'm about to reach.

So, Declan may think the banner ads at Wired.com pay the rent, and the bean
counters may think this is so, but I doubt any of us are looking at the
ads. Except the dummies.

--Tim May

Y2K: A good chance to reformat America's hard drive and empty the trash.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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