Media Sites: Say No to Pop-Ups

I enjoyed reading this article from Wired. I think it does a good job of analyzing the whole pop-up thing. However I'll go a little further with this question: What is the worst thing about pop-ads (pop-ups/unders)? You may have a different answer, but for me it is having to close the danged things.

So say there are 20 pop-ads and out of that 20, one truly interests me (and I'm being generous here). That means that in order to recieve that one "good" ad I have to close 19 "bad" ads. When in reality it is more like 1 out of 100 or 1 out of 1000, the ad I may be interested in gets closed without looking at it because it is just another annoyance invading my desktop, which is my personal space, -- an important point that seems to elude the pop-ad peddlers.

I haven't been bothered for 4 years or so, since I started blocking pop-ads about that time. I have been blissfully unaware of what any of them may be trying to sell me. Annoy me enough -- invade what I consider my space enough, and I will blot you out of my world any way I can.

So what about ad supported sites? There is no free ride right? Everything costs something, right? I have no "blanket" ad blocker in place except for pop-ads. I still have flash turned on and I use Adblock (a Firefox extension) which is selective for flash, graphics and I-frames. Frankly, I only bother with Adblock when an ad is annoying and flashing in my face. Adblock is effective, but it takes work. So I see the ads on ad supported sites that respect me as a possible customer and I don't see the ads that don't.

There is another problem with online ads these days. I may see an ad that is a great offer from a Web based business that I know and trust. But with the prevalence of phishing, am I going to click on that ad link? Not without thinking about it. I'm much more likely to type in the URL of the trusted site and rummage around to see if the "deal" is available without having to click on the ad link. If not, I figure I can do without. This is one very real way in which the criminals are further ruining e-commerce. A way that I've never seen discussed anywhere, but I can't be the only cautious surfer who does not trust every link I see. I wonder how many of us think twice about following a link in an ad?

We live in a world in which advertising is becoming more and more intrusive. Marketers keep trying to find new ways to get in our faces (or ears in the case of audio only media). There are limits. Just like the telemarketers overreached until the American public demanded legislative relief, all advertisers risk alienating the very people they are trying to reach. In the pop-ad arena, this level of alienation was reached several years ago, as evidenced by the popularity and proliferation of pop-ad blockers. Some marketers are backing off while others are working hard to get around pop-up blockers. To what end, the accidental click in a effort to get rid of the thing? It is time for the pop-ad purveyors to give it, and us, a rest.