GINORMOUS banner ad at download.com.

October 25, 2001 10:14 AM

GINORMOUS banner ad at download.com. From what I can tell, it only auto-expands on the first visit, presumably cookied, but I was still pretty annoyed. If you click to view, it blows up again, runs a little commercial at you(sndtrk by Madonna), and shrinks again. A little better than the layout-destroying monoliths other sites are using?
posted by Su (20 comments total)

Older thread from when new ad size "standards" were proposed, though this one isn't in there.

Funny enough, there's a comment proposing text ads.
posted by Su at 10:25 AM on October 25, 2001

Adcritic's flash ads are pretty horrendous too.
posted by mathowie at 10:31 AM on October 25, 2001

Tech TV and Adcritic do it too.
posted by riffola at 10:32 AM on October 25, 2001

What banner ad? I don't see any banner ad. (Good old AdSubtract Pro!)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:03 AM on October 25, 2001

You know, I think these ads are disliked by folks who don't like advertising of any sort. It's one thing with pop-ups and pop-unders, but I don't mind these ads much...
posted by owillis at 11:12 AM on October 25, 2001

I think the ads such as at download.com are relatively painless in comparison with the pop-ups enforced by some sites, as owillis says.
posted by williamtry at 11:17 AM on October 25, 2001

Ginormous, eh? Another Transformers fan makes their presence known...
posted by NortonDC at 11:21 AM on October 25, 2001

ask jeeves has a front page takeover for it. microsoft is patting themselves on the back pretty hard today.
posted by donkeysuck at 11:24 AM on October 25, 2001

these ads are worlds better than the pop-unders, as mentioned already. These expandable ads are less intrusive than something that opens in a new window. They are more interactive and engaging than banner ads. They're not ideal-- I'd prefer if these didn't automatically open to their full size, only doing so when clicked on or moused over. Of course, I think that textads are a better format in general, but I could see one of these flash interactives being way cool.
posted by andrewraff at 11:26 AM on October 25, 2001

*ups/unders I can live with. But I once saw an ad, for a car I think, I don't remember which, where, as soon as I got to the news site and started reading, some pacman or something ate the words from the article and left the banner ad all alone. A few seconds later, the text showed up again.

Clever, but it pissed me off. And I LIKE advertising.
posted by Tacodog at 11:34 AM on October 25, 2001

Oh yeah, and Sting is going to hold a concert celebrating the launch of Windows XP tonight.


Ode to Microsoft Passport:


EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE
EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE
EVERY BOND YOU BREAK
I'LL BE WATCHING YOU

EVERY SINGLE DAY
EVERY WORD YOU SAY
EVERY GAME YOU PLAY
I'LL BE WATCHING YOU
posted by lheiskell at 11:59 AM on October 25, 2001

Sting's concert concluded an hour or so back.
posted by riffola at 12:03 PM on October 25, 2001

at IGN.com they do a couple of REALLY annoying ad techniques. The first one is to force a time-delayed ad between pages forcing you to watch or shut the browser.

The second is the infinitly more annoying flash ads they seem to do for movies (Planet of the Apes -and most recently Thirteen Ghosts) These ads will shake the browser, make noises, and even cast, "ghost" images over the pages you are looking at. I tend to avoid the site altogether now because of it. Too bad I used to enjoy the site once.
posted by KnitWit at 12:16 PM on October 25, 2001

I'm also not seeing any unusually large banner ad - let alone one with sound. Is this is Windows-only thing?
posted by cakeman at 12:24 PM on October 25, 2001

Cakeman: I assume you're a Mac user. Just got an e-mail about this, and yes, it's apparently only in the PC section, as it's an ad for XP. Click on Windows below the banner in whatever section you get to. I forgot that the site will automatically redirect you to the appropriate area for your system.
posted by Su at 12:41 PM on October 25, 2001

Zap2it.com was recently running the most obnoxious ad I've ever encountered. It was for the movie Thirteen Ghosts; when you hit a page with the ad, a flash movie started and projected ghosts all over the screen for maybe 10-20 seconds, completely preventing you from clicking on anything. As if that wasn't bad enough, it also played some loud and horribly tinny sounds. They're apparently supposed to sound like ghosts and thunder but instead sound more like someone dropped a Casio on their foot.

Now they're running an ad that automatically plays audio on every page, even if you've listened once. Which is almost as obnoxious; don't blast sound out of my speakers or take control of my browser unless I give you permission.
posted by realityblurred at 12:59 PM on October 25, 2001

If you like this ad, you'll love what's going on over at Hour.ca. (At least it's not an MS ad. I guess.)
posted by danwalker at 1:05 PM on October 25, 2001

Just to clarify something here. Sometimes people seem to assume that people who don't like say......X10 adds really don't like popunders. I would agree that popunders are annoying but when I say "I hate X10 advertising" it's the content of their advertising message, not the framework of it, that I am referring to.

You want a headache, try the new Fileplanet download service. I think they throw in a new ad every week. They are annoying, the downloads rarely work, or if they do they are corrupted, and the message of at least one of those ads is pretty off.

Oh, they don't allow resuming either. Fun all round.
posted by lucien at 1:47 PM on October 25, 2001

No ad. It read by User-Agent header and took me right to the Linux downloads as usual.
posted by jamsterdam at 2:35 PM on October 25, 2001

They're using a Flash parameter called "wmode" that only works in IE 4+ on the PC. It's basically a huge Flash movie with a mostly transparent background, floating in a div on top of the page.

This is potentially a really useful application of Flash. Too bad it'll be rendered pointless in a few weeks once the technique gets associated with the words "annoying" and "obtrusive".
posted by jeffhoward at 2:39 PM on October 25, 2001