Go away, Leonardo! Shoo!
This morning, I was intrigued by one of the Huffington posts. I clicked on the story from Arianna’s home page and was greeted with not one put two flash-animated ads for “Blood Diamond,” each “framing” the story. In fact, the ads impaired the text so much that they rendered the piece unreadable on my 17-inch flat panel. And they wouldn’t get out of the way.
Rolling my cursor over the dual disruptive ads prompted their further expansion, though a small “x close” square was briefly glimpsed. Then it disappeared. I rolled again, and quickly clicked on the X with the hope of finally getting to my morning reading. The images contracted, but only to their original state and not enough to reveal the full text of the story! A brooding sideways-sliding Leonardo DiCaprio blocked my view. Hey, Leo, lighten up. You got to work with Jennifer Connelly (pictured) on this one!
Remember the nascent days of Internet advertising when consumers revolted over the commercial intrusion in their online lives? Today, some say that more online ads give online publishers greater selection and thus the latitude to accept fewer of the obtrusive variety. I’m not so sure.
With P&G proclaiming a stepped-up migration of its ad spend away from broadcast TV in favor of cable and online, and the leading media moguls, gathered at the CSFB Media and Telecom Conference in New York this week, predicting robust advertising revenues from their online strategies, I believe that online travelers are in for even more intrusive and cursor-resistant come-ons. A small price to pay for content?
At least we can instantly opt-out of the full-screen ad that greets us upon entering Forbes.com. It’s the content-blocking ads from which one has to struggle to escape that bother me. Don’t you agree, weather.com?
Blood Diamond Huffington Post online advertising CSFB Media Conference Leonardo DiCaprio Jennifer Connelly online marketing