When advertising attacks

Web sites 2 Minutes

A story at InfoWorld’s website last Friday revealed the startling news that Dell and Sony may have covered up the problem with exploding laptop batteries. According to reporter Paul F. Roberts, the two companies “knew about and discussed manufacturing problems with Sony-made Lithium-Ion batteries as long as ten months ago.” [* link at end of post]

It’s a well-written story that can’t possibly do any good for either company’s checkered reputation.

But that’s the last time I’ll knowingly visit Infoworld.com. Here’s just a taste of what I got when I visited this page:

  • An interstitial ad, a full page selling a single product that imposes itself as a barrier between the link you click and the story you want to read.
  • A pull-down ad in the upper right corner that creates the effect of peeling the current page down and covering the content. It also goes away after a few seconds unless you find the well-hidden Close button first.
  • A banner ad along the top of the page and a square ad in the middle of the main story, both of which use code that expands the ad when the mouse pointer crosses it. In the process, the ad covers the content and disrupts the reading experience. If you move the mouse in any direction, you’ll get one of these.
  • Flash-animated video playback in a banner ad with audio that came blaring out of my speakers as soon as my mouse pointer accidentally touched the ad.

The overall impression was extraordinarily hostile and disruptive. And not in a good way. It made me want to run screaming from the site. I don’t read InfoWorld regularly, and after this experience, I can’t imagine why anyone would. (Ironically, when I revisited the page a minute ago to verify that the link worked, it locked up my browser window.)

I’m reluctant to link to the original story, as well, because the last thing I want is for you to follow a link I provide and have a similarly terrible experience.

Yes, I know I could use ad-blocking software. The good news is that most sites aren’t this aggressive, and many sites that I visit have advertising I want to see. But if other sites begin following InfoWorld’s lead, I’ll have no choice.

[*] OK, here’s the link. But you’ve been warned.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/

Published

11 thoughts on “When advertising attacks”

  1. My “favorites” are the ads that make noise. Forbes used to (may still have) one where a little animated Steve Forbes pops up on the lower left of your screen and starts talking about what’s in the latest issue. Then there’s the banner you occasionally run into with a really loud mosquito buzzing noise. I’ve never stuck around long enough on sites that display it to figure out what it is for.

  2. Don’t even get me started on this topic. Whenever a go to a website with such annoyances, I invariably put it in my permanent cyberdoghouse. I don’t go there again unless I absolutely positively must — and that’s never the case.

  6. Between Norton and Adblock for Firefox, and not allowing Flash on my system, I get none of this. I’ll gladly take the attendant tradeoffs.

  7. I haven’t visited InfoWorld for years for just that reason. As someone who makes his living from selling ads on web sites, this REALLY bugs me. It’s overdone, it’s an insult to the audience, and it just encourages (almost forces) people to use ad-blockers.

    When I see a site like that, my impression is one of desperation – “normally we wouldn’t want to bother our audience that much, but we’ve already written off this site, so it might as well make as much money as it can before we pull the plug.” Ironically, advertisers might spend more money there if they didn’t have the same impression.

  8. InformationWeek is the same. I go there now and again to read Fred Langa’s column, and unless I have ad-blocking software turned on it’s a horrible experience. All that Flash really affects low performance machines too.

    Until then I’d struggled without major ad-blocking software and just used Firefox’s built-in popup blocker and blocking images from certain advertising domains. It was InformatioWeek that pushed me over the edge and made me install AdBlock for Firefox.

    I too earn money from advertising on my site, and while I make the adverts obtrusive enough for people to notice them to click on them, they’re not exactly in your face, vying for your attention. And I don’t penalise people for running ad-blocking software either – apart from being hypocritical, it’s starting to become something of a necessity these days, sadly.

  9. I’m reluctant to link to the original story, as well, because the last thing I want is for you to follow a link I provide and have a similarly terrible experience.

    Firefox > Tools > Options > Web Features:
    – ‘Block Popup Windows’ checkbox is checked
    – ‘Load Images’ checkbox is unchecked (I’m on 56K dialup);
    – ‘Enable Java’ checkbox is unchecked;
    – ‘Enable JavaScript’ checkbox is unchecked;

    In about:config,
    – plugin.default_plugin_disabled Toggled to false;

    Oh, and Flash is not installed.

    No problems here with the site.

  10. US News and World Report — one of the college ranking pages has a man talking about erectile dysfunction and common sexual problems.

Comments are closed.