Online advertising is getting a great deal of attention days with players like Google, Double Click, Yahoo, just to name a few.
But with almost any advertising, there’s a movement to circumvent it.
.. TV vs DVR, time shifting, fast-forward.
.. FM radio vs Satellite radio, paid subscriptions, commercial free.
Remember the first years of pop-up advertising on websites? ISPs started offering “Pop-up Blocker” software free to their members. It was such a demand that most browsers now implement pop-up blocking as a standard feature.
Advertising is a balancing act. Google has been hugely successful with their text/banner-style AdWords – I believe because they’re not aggressive with their impact. Until this evening, I tolerated, sometimes enjoyed, viewing advertising. I felt like it educated me. A good advertisement might teach me of a new product I hadn’t heard of, a service I might use or recommend. Those AT&T commercials where
two people are talking on mobile phones, and one is dropped… hilarious!
Until tonight, when I went to read
this article on Wired.com.
Covering 50% of the first few paragraphs is an AT&T advertising overlay. I gave the ad 3 minutes to go away. I tried every key combo, tried following the link of the ad… nothing. The article is unreadable in Firefox. Same result in IE.
The Irony is: the article is about
Safari 3 and how “Safari sucks.” Care to guess how the page looks in Safari? flawless. No content-blocking AT&T advertisement.
UPDATE:
Wired apologizes for the ad.