It’s Called Social for a Reason

I was seriously irked a little while ago when I went to look up information on allmusic.com and a Flash ad started talking at me attempting to sell air fresheners.  And to add to my grievance, I couldn’t find a button to turn the blasted thing off.

At the best of times, web ads that make noise at me are an irritation, but they are particularly egregious when I am already listening to music. The idiocy of placing a talking ad on a site about music just compounds their miscalculation.  (And Earl Hines had such a sweet groove going when that ad came on!)

They are lucky that I was so busy trying to shut the stupid ad off that I don’t remember which air freshener I hate.  But if I see that ad again, believe me, I will hate them with a vengance.

Does it really need to be said, once again, that a negative experience has a much more lasting impact on a potential customer’s perception of a product than a postive experience?

Now there is nothing wrong with advertising.  As a business person I understand the need to get your message out.   If anything, as a business person I should be willing to give other businesses a chance to market to me.  

Like many other web users, I enjoy the availability of free information on the web.   But there is a cost to web servers and gathering the information to put on web sites and advertising is one way to help pay for those costs. 

The web is not TV.  I am not a captive audience.  When watching TV I can’t do anything about those annoying overlays television stations put on the bottom of the screen to make up for the fact that most viewers are skipping through commercials because they’ve recorded the programs on their DVR.

But on the web, I have any number of places to get the same information.  I can put on an ad blocker so I don’t have to see the advertising.  But I am willing to give advertisers a chance.  

I will tolerate sitting through a short commercial to see a Daily Show episode.  TV shows are not cheap to produce.  But I should point out that I tend to watch the Daily Show and Colbert show in long chunks rather than nightly and that seeing the same commerical over and over again is not conducive to friendliness.  (A couple of weeks ago I was ready to shove Mother Nature into her little red package.)

I have struck a mental bargain with web advertisers.  I will respect your need to advertise and won’t install an ad blocker, but you have to be respectful of me and not degrade  my web experience.

Spam is not respectful.  Advertising that interferes with my use of the web is not respectful.  Here’s a list of advertising practices that will drive me away:

• Pop-ups
• Pop-unders
• Ads that move across the screen
• Ads that enlarge when  I mouseover them to reach a menu button
• Ajax pop ups that ask me if really want to leave the page
• Ads that make noise at me, especially if there is no obvious way to shut them up 
• Ads that pretend to be error messages or virus warnings

There are so many better ways to take advantage of the web to sell products.  It just strikes me as lazy and unimaginative to do the same old thing.  For the amount of money they put into creating that Flash ad they could have created a viral video for YouTube.  They could be creating customer channels on Twitter and Facebook. 

You want to get my attention?  Don’t make me mad.  Get me interested. If I like your idea enough I’ll blog about it. Or Digg it.  Or post it to Facebook like I did with one of those JetBlue videos for “CEOs only”.