Most Hated On-line Advertising Techniques

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

Courtesy of Jakob Nielsen, web usability guru:

Design Element / Users Answering "Very Negatively" or "Negatively"
Pops-up in front of your window - 95%
Loads slowly - 94%
Tries to trick you into clicking on it - 94%
Does not have a "Close" button - 93%
Covers what you are trying to see - 93%
Doesn't say what it is for - 92%
Moves content around - 92%
Occupies most of the page - 90%
Blinks on and off - 87%
Floats across the screen - 79%
Automatically plays sound - 79%

Any or all of those (with the possible exceptions of "Blinks on and off" and "Does not say what it is for") would probably rank about an 11 out of 10 in terms of annoyance factor in my book. Happy to note that Toon Zone doesn't engage in any of these .

-- Ed/Ace

[Chad Bonin]

The worst are the "tries to trick you" ones. No, I don't fall for them, but every month I hear my parents ask why the computer needs to run a viral scan..."

[Magwheel]

Interesting find (and a very useful site!). I'm surprised more people don't hate blinking text, and ads that automatically play a sound. I get extremely frustrated if something's blinking too much, so I leave the page if I can't scroll the offending ad off the screen. And I HATE things that play sounds. If I'm not listening to music at the time, I MIGHT not leave the site right away, but I probably will not return.

In a similar vein, these bad advertising techniques are creating quite the dilemma for web developers and such, too, becuase even non-intrusive ads (which in an ideal world would be an effective way to pay for operational costs) are being blocked by users who've had too much. maybe more sites will start charging for access to information (subscriptions). Similar to how you have to pay more for cable or satellite than for just a tv with rabbit ears. Many news and magazine sites already do it.

In the meantime, bad ads are good business. Ugly ads and spam hardly cost anything to produce, and yet they still draw in enough people to make a few dollars Maybe we should punish the people who follow these annoying ads and buy stuff

Edit: I do follow ads that are on professional, reputable sites, and link to similar ones, if they're relevant to what I feel like checking out at the moment. I'm a moody surfer

[Chris Wood]

The worst kind is spyware that burrows into your computer and then produces pop-ups all over the place when you're browsing.