April 29, 2001

12:21 PM

The Shoshkeles have you So wizard minds of Boston.com claim they've come to hit the Holy Grail of banner ad efectiveness: Simply put, you won't be able to ignore them - (that is, unless you've got a Mac :) Will this "revolutionary" form of ad banner endure? Anyway, it wouldn't hurt those "visionaries" to have a little reading though - what you think?
posted by betobeto (12 comments total)

Meanwhile, two days ago...
posted by owillis at 12:24 PM on April 29, 2001

Those ads, by the way, work just fine on the Mac version of IE. That is to say, they show up. I'm not sure if they can really be said to "work" in any sense on any platform.
posted by kindall at 12:28 PM on April 29, 2001

Never clicked on the previous post. With AdSubtract on Opera just crashed, IE froze up. Surely there's an ad-suppression program that wipes these and opens the page?
posted by aflakete at 12:35 PM on April 29, 2001

ohh.. and they crash IE - wow, what an easy way for boston.com to piss off just about everyone
posted by Zebulun at 1:41 PM on April 29, 2001

(they didn't crash my IE...)

my favorite "shoshkele" is this intel one
posted by palegirl at 1:48 PM on April 29, 2001

My IE won't let me click any links. Almost like they forget to toss the layer out when it's done.
posted by perplexed at 2:07 PM on April 29, 2001

IE 5.5 on a PC and once the ad's run I can't click on anything BUT that ad. Hmmm. Nope. That falls under the subject heading Get That Off My Browser.
posted by NsJen at 2:36 PM on April 29, 2001

D'oh! Damn, should I have seen this one earlier.... sorry about that.

Well anyway, the MeFi system said me that such URL wasn't on its recent list so it was OK to post.... and well I don't "live" in MeFi either to get hold of all posts, but that's another story.

I guess we are probably trusting computer "smarts" a little too much??? ....
posted by betobeto at 2:54 PM on April 29, 2001

Just an appropriate quote from ALA in case you're too lazy to click on the link above.


"When American newspapers first discovered that advertising could be a significant revenue source, back in the 19th century, they tried running ads "above the fold" on their front pages to make sure readers would see them. But readers found this tactic so irritating that they refused to buy newspapers that used it and turned to ones that didn't. Once it was discovered that banner-style ads in newspapers were both irritating and ineffective, smart newspaper publishers (and advertisers) stopped using them."


Doesn't it remind you of the well-known saying "Those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it"?
posted by betobeto at 3:15 PM on April 29, 2001

OK, so does anyone have any links to real live versions of these things, as opposed to the demo pages?

You can't click on any links because the page in the browser is just an image in the flash animation.

I tried the front page of Boston.com a few times with different browsers and didn't see anything.

Quote:"NOTE: Please note that the demos showcased on this page are Flash 4 based. This is done for confidentiality reasons. If you need to test the functionality of final release Shoshkeles (TM) please contact us."

So are the final ads flash based?

Do they think they have some fancy HTML trick that they need to hide?

And the disclaimer at the bottom of the example page interested me, do they actually have permission to do these example? Isn't it in bad taste to create example ads without permission?
posted by mutagen at 3:54 PM on April 29, 2001

You can't click on any links because the page in the browser is just an image in the flash animation.

Right. Feeling a bit silly now. *sheepish grin*
posted by NsJen at 5:44 PM on April 29, 2001

I usually hate banner ads and, in fact, turn images off in my Opera browser. But these shoshkeles are cute--at least the demo ones.

betobeto: right on! But nobody reads history anymore.
posted by caraig at 7:17 PM on April 29, 2001