The worst Internet ad ever.

March 1, 2002 10:42 AM

The worst Internet ad ever. Hopefully I won't be the only one to see it; it's not clear how long it will be there. They actually obliterate your ability to see the content for a few seconds. Makes me want to strangle Next Day Blinds. Anyone else have examples of horrible (or good) new Internet ads?
posted by IPLawyer (21 comments total)

There's a really annoying ad on Yahoo right now for Snickers. I think you'll see it if you go to Yahoo Sports. It pops up literally in the middle of the page and obscures whatever you're trying to look at. Last night at home it also crashed my computer. Grrrrrr.
posted by schmedeman at 10:48 AM on March 1, 2002

This is the first time you've seen one of these? Did you just move to a PC/IE (only browser combo the flash/activeX ads work on)? There are tons of these, and its a pretty standard format for a lot of sites. This one isnt even that bad, compared to many I've seen.

I GREATLY prefer interstitial ads to these or pop ups, but, in talking to some ad sales guys I know, users actually tend to prefer these over-the-page ads... who the hell knows why.
posted by malphigian at 10:49 AM on March 1, 2002

No, this is the internet's worst ad.
posted by turaho at 10:58 AM on March 1, 2002

If you haven't yet, visit 37signals' Design Not Found.

They feature the best (and worst) in contingency design, including ads.

You might even want to suggest yours.
posted by sans at 11:16 AM on March 1, 2002

Whatever you're talking about (must be some sort of shoshkele), I'm seeing nothing but a normal front page on IE/Mac 5.1.

Which means the ad I saw last night is worse, because it's far more universal. I loaded the TV Guide Listings page, because I wanted to find out whether or not CSI was a repeat or not. So the entire page loads (and it's a mother of a page; table cells out the wazzoo, takes forever as it is), and as soon as it's done loading and displaying, but before you have a chance to actually click on anything, the entire page disappears and is replaced with a full-page ad for Six Feet Under. I don't know whether or not you were forced to stare at that ad for X length of time or not, because I immediately said "screw this" and closed the entire window. And made a conscious decision not to watch Six Feet Under or go to tvguide.com for a while.
posted by aaron at 11:22 AM on March 1, 2002

Hey Aaron, good basis for a boycott of Six Feet Under (which I enjoyed more than season 3 of Sopranos) -- enjoy the Bernie Mac show.
posted by uftheory at 11:33 AM on March 1, 2002

No, this is the internet's worst ad.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 11:42 AM on March 1, 2002

"Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?"
posted by ColdChef at 11:43 AM on March 1, 2002

I was about to post the same thing- I had the same experience with tvguide.net last night doing the same thing- I wanted to know if CSI was a repeat! Alas, it wasn't, and it was enjoyable as always. Anyway, I don't even have cable nor was I looking at listings for cable, if they're going to force me to look at ads they should at least send me ads that are relevant to me.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 11:44 AM on March 1, 2002

"Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?"
posted by ColdChef at 11:59 AM on March 1, 2002

Today I saw a pop up ad for some celebrity news site or something like that, which had taken away the 'close window' cross in the right hand corner and stopped you right clicking on the bar at the bottom to close. The only way you could get rid of it was to put a comment in a box on the site. I said 'get this fucking pop up piece of shit off my screen'. I think most of the comments will say something similar.
posted by Summer at 12:15 PM on March 1, 2002

<smug>Between using Mozilla as my daily browser (no popups!) and using Junkbuster to block ads, I hardly see any of that stuff anymore.</smug>
posted by RylandDotNet at 12:43 PM on March 1, 2002

Awesome ColdChef....I loved that sketch.
posted by mmascolino at 1:03 PM on March 1, 2002

Funny, I don't see the annoying yahoo ad or the washingtonpost.com ad. I've blocked nearly all the ad servers at my firewall and couldn't be happier.
posted by shagoth at 1:06 PM on March 1, 2002

Hey Aaron, good basis for a boycott of Six Feet Under (which I enjoyed more than season 3 of Sopranos) -- enjoy the Bernie Mac show.

Your pathetic snottiness aside, I was already a non-fan of SFU, having enjoyed it much less than season three of The Sopranos, and was already on the fence as to whether or not to give it another try. The overly obnoxious ad merely helped me make the final decision.

Do you automatically respond positively to every ad you see, because to do otherwise would be elitist?
posted by aaron at 1:52 PM on March 1, 2002

Yes, of course Mozilla is a bit...well *common* isn't it? I mean, it may be sketchy and cool, and it certainly beats Opera, but if you're on a Mac, you have 2 even better choices. The obvious one is Omniweb for OsX which is a really marvelous piece of software. I believe it can block ads.

Of course for those who truly enjoy the finer things in life there is the ultralight, stylish icab, downloadable at icab.de. It can block images of certain size and from different servers....puts you in the driver's seat. It is fast...and is about 3MB.

And why count up life's complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger's seat?
posted by Settle at 1:57 PM on March 1, 2002

Summer to get rid of popups that don't have the close button, make sure they are focused in your task bar and hit alt+F4
posted by bitdamaged at 3:22 PM on March 1, 2002

Thanks bitdamaged, I'll try that next time.
posted by Summer at 4:04 PM on March 1, 2002

I don't see anything out of the ordinary when I go to that page.
posted by dgeiser13 at 5:21 PM on March 1, 2002

I don't know how they time how long the ad stays up, but it was extremely short on my computer. If I had blinked I would have missed it.
posted by ArkIlloid at 7:15 PM on March 1, 2002

ah yes, Settle, icab. cookie filtering, image filtering, javascript filtering. tiny and fast. uses netscape plugins. CSS1 (mostly) implemented. still in beta, still some odd rendering of hyper-modern code, but getting very close now. if you're on a mac, 9 or X, you ought to take a look.
posted by Dean King at 10:35 PM on March 1, 2002