No! I have not introduced blog ads here on JimmyAkin.Org!
But I am showing you a captured image of a blog ad to illustrate something about a current advertising trend.
To your left you’ll see a frame of a Flash animation that is appearing on other blogs, such as PowerLine (where I got this one).
In the real animation, the happy spider bounces up and down to attract your attention.
And it works!
Now, normally, I totally tune out anything in the margins of the pages I’m looking at. I make it a matter of principle to overlook ads obnoxiously placed in the middle of text I’m reading, too.
To deal with people like me, advertisers are trying different approaches to try to grab the attention of professional ad-ignorers.
One strategy is pure evil: It involves having the ad involve vast amounts of motion and color to attract your attention. The archtypical example of this is an ad that was running a few weeks ago by a company called "Jamster," which sells ringtones.
It’s ads were horrendous. They featured a repulsive and depraved looking photo-art fishman (with a figleaf over his genitals and a pair of aviators’ goggles) who zoomed jerkily and frenetically back and forth across the ad space in a nauseating fashion.
It was certainly enough to catch even the most veteran ad-ignorer’s attention, but it was also as repulsive as all get out and undoubtedly made many viewers want to burn Jamster’s headquarters to the ground or at least report it to the United Nations for violating the Geneva Convention on the use of torture.
Incidentally, JAMSTER IS BEING SUED FOR ITS SELLING PRACTICES, though not for the noxiousness of its ads.
A second strategy involves offering the reader simple games, as in the "Win a free iPod!" campaign. Though I never play videogames, these also attracted my attention. I wanted to shoot the bad guy! I wanted to blast the flying saucer! I wanted to punch the prizefighter! I wanted to squash the bug!
Unfortuantely, I already had an iPod, so I didn’t. (Except on a few occasions.)
Many wondered whether the offer of a free iPod was fake, and it turned out that it wasn’t (though there were additional requirements for getting one).
A third strategy is exemplified by the company who I frame-grabbed above. It’s ads are meant to get you to go for a new mortgage quote.
The ads this company uses have eye-catching colors, interesting images, and a modest (not overwhelming) degree of motion. It has a variety of different ads that it uses (dinosaurs, haunted houses, etc.), but I picked one that has a bouncing, friendly spider in an interesting-looking lab.
Let’s look at the advantages this form of advertising has:
- In the Flash animation I frame-grabbed, the friendly spider bounces up and down a bit to draw my eye.
- It’s a spider! Spiders can be dangerous!
- But it’s smiling, signalling that it’s friendly and happy.
- It has Big Eyes. (Humans are suckers for big eyes, or rather big mammalian-looking eyes like this spider has. It’s part of why we find babies and puppies and kitties cute.)
- It’s fuzzy. (Humans are suckers for fuzziness. It’s another mammalian characteristic.)
- It’s high-contrast (black and white) making its face more memorable (that’s one of the reasons Mickey Mouse is glommed-onto by so many kids even though his high-pitched voice means there are so few cartoons about him: He has a high-contrast face).
- It’s legs are stuck out like it’s about to spring into action.
- Why is the big-eyed, fuzzy spider bouncing and smiling and about to spring into action?Does it want to play? (This is classic play-inviting behavior.)
- It’s in a lab with cool colors–both figuratively and literally (green, blue, and purple are the "cool" as opposed to "warm" colors of the spectrum).
- Labs are interesting!
- What’s in those neat-o green test tubes?
- What are the blue and purple ray-emitters for?
- What else is in the lab that I can’t see?
- Who runs the lab?
- And why?
- Can I go to this lab and play with the technological doo-dads there?
- Can I play with the friendly spider?
You see how many ways the ad invites you and draws you into it, even subconsciously?
It’s a way of offering the reader something pleasant in exchange for looking at the ad (unlike the evil <anathema!!!>Jamster</anathema!!!>), and insofar as that goes, great. Advertisers need to make their products known to folks, and if they offer something pleasing in exchange for the attention needed to make them aware of it, that’s a fair trade.
But there’s a problem here.
The ads can be so pleasing that the viewer feels let down when the ad has done its work.
I’m intrigued by the happy, bouncing spider in the lab! I’d like to play with the spider!–if it was a real entity. Or, failing that, I’d like to watch a little story about the spider or play a little videogame about him in the lab or something!
I WANT MORE HAPPY, BOUNCING SPIDER IN THE LAB!
But noooooooooo! If I click on any part of the ad, it takes me to a site where I can get a mortgage quote, and there is NO MORE HAPPY, BOUNCING SPIDER IN THE LAB!
EVER!
Maybe the next generation of web advertising will allow me to satisfy my impulse to interact with what caught my attention and intrigued me–before giving me a chance to purchase whatever it is that’s being sold.
Or maybe not.
It brings to mind a line that the Devil gets to deliver in the original (1960s) version of the movie Bedazzled:
"I came up with the seven deadly sins in one afternoon. . . . The only thing I’ve come up with lately is advertising."
As it happens, I work for a company which (among other things) makes and places Internet ads. Our company’s old major focus was Yellow Pages, so we have the odd idea that advertising should appeal to consumers who want to buy and are looking to buy, not just annoy random passersby.
Our philosophy is that banner ads ought to serve and help the consumer, not annoy them. They should be placed where they’ll find people who want to click on them, not in places where they won’t. They should be pleasing to the eye and not take up too much bandwidth or block page content. And yes, ideally they should give people something useful that’s directly related to the ad, not spin one thing and give another.
Needless to say, not everyone agrees with us.
However, our clients find they get a lot more click-through for a lot lower price, so we can laugh all the way to the bank at those who don’t agree with us. 🙂
(It’s also a curious fact that, as advertising on other media annoys more and more people while its market shrinks, and Internet media grows and grows, the only other growing ad sector is Yellow Pages. The TV people envy us and plead for insights. This amuses us mightily.)
In Firefox I use and extention called Adblock. It allows you to block any image on a page (including Flash) You can set a wildcard to block all images from the same domain also. I don’t try to block all ads just the ones I find the most offensive.
My favorite local news source has super-duper annoying “floating” ads that block part of the opening page and eventually disappear (if you’re patient, which I am not) — but if you try to click on the TEENY TINY “Close” or “X” you usually aim wrong and open the stupid ad instead. I will NEVER purchase one of those products or frequent that business. Yeah, I know I should use that ad blocker.
‘thann
I work in a lab but I’ve never seen a happy, bouncing spider here. There once was a huge dead cockroach in the hallway, but I didn’t want to play with it.
I want to switch to the happy spider lab!
If you want to get rid of ads I would highly recommend AdMuncher ( found at http://www.admuncher.com ) They have a free trial (full version for 30 days – and no spyware), and it has been the best $25 I have ever spent. It is a Windows only program, it will work with any browser, and comes complete and ready to get rid of most ads without any training (you can add your own blocked things as well).
The mortgage company people ran an add all last fall featuring mortgage quotes in all the states of the United States. It featured the states in red and blue and people, myself included, would mistake it for an electoral college analysis and click on it.
I have to second the recommendation for Firefox. It is very customizable, and pretty easy to do if you have a little patience. I have downloaded an extension called “Flashblock” which replaces all Flash animations on a page with an image I can click. If I want to view a particular animation, I click the button. Otherwise, I can ignore it. 90% of irritating web ads are disable automatically!
Like Jeff, I run adblock. Unlike Jeff, I block all ads. 🙂
I’ve been noticing lately that I have more money. Not that I’ve been making more money, but rather I’ve been spending less.
Upon reflection, I think it’s because I’ve cut almost all the ads out of my life. We gave up cable TV for Lent two years ago and never went back. We use Netflix to watch the few shows that we like. Sure we’re a bit behind, but it really doesn’t matter. We just finished watching the first season of The Apprentice, and are currently working on Babylon 5. The shows are still good and there’s no ads.
In the car, I listen to my favorite podcasts or audio books. No ads. I block the ads in the browser. At home I listen to EWTN on Sirius. No ads. I do get some ads listening to FoxNews on Sirius, but their ads are so bad they’re not even remotely tempting. Plus, ads without video lose a lot of their power.
I seem to be losing weight too.
No ads. It’s a good thing. 🙂
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