May 20, 2001

11:53 PM

Huge ads on NY Times siteQuite enormous and obnoxious. I thought their long, skinny ads were a reasonable innovation, but this invades the "editorial space." (Hit reload a few times; they've got different aspect ratios.)
posted by aniretac (11 comments total)

Like, wow, they're responsive. They've already taken them down. What, within an hour of posting the article? They were approximately 300 x 200 px. and adjacent to the article's Hed and Deck.
posted by aniretac at 12:01 AM on May 21, 2001

They must be testing. Now I'm getting them on the second page of the article.
posted by aniretac at 12:09 AM on May 21, 2001

Worse, they seem to be experimenting with pop-ups, as well: I got them twice tonight, but no biggie banner ads.

I really don't mind big banners, really really I don't. I want sites to make money. (I could do without the superfast animation, though, as in this Toshiba ad. Very hard to read with that whizzing away.) But pop-ups are obnoxious and evil, and worse, they tend to crash my browser (pretty vanilla IE5.5/Win98 system, lots o' RAM, probably due for a total reinstall anyway). It's hard to like a site when the first thing you see after going there is a BSOD.

Maybe that's not a valid or universal objection, but that's my experience....
posted by dhartung at 12:35 AM on May 21, 2001

Speaking of which, epinions.com has started using pop-ups in a way that completely destroys the user interface. The same pop-up launches every single time you make a server request - ie, every time you move from page to page. Even worse, the ads don't disappear, but rather keep collecting in your task bar. After doing a small amount of research I had about 13 windows to close!

No more epinions for me.
posted by preguicoso at 7:25 AM on May 21, 2001

I kind of like the (implied) dynamic preguicoso suggests: ads that are annoying enough to be noticed (and thus can actually earn money, maybe) force one either to (a) bear the annoyance because of the value of the content or (b) decide that the content isn't worthwhile.

Thus, the market will sort out the worthwhile from the not-worth-enough. Prediction? NYTimes.com will thrive despite the obnoxious ads, ePinions won't.
posted by MattD at 7:30 AM on May 21, 2001

Hmm... I'm not seeing the ads on the nytimes site - i'm assuming they're similar to the ones on salon and cnet? Also, epinions isn't giving me popups on every server call - i only got the x10 thing once, when I first entered the site. Here's a suggestion though - if you don't like the way a particular ad is displayed, write and complain. A popup that comes up over and over like that is *probably* a bug in the ad code. If not, they'd probably like to know if they're driving customers away. A few complaints can get a thing like that changed.

As an aside, those damn x10 popups are showing up EVERYWHERE. I wonder if x10 is coming even remotely close to getting their money's worth out of them.
posted by chrisege at 8:10 AM on May 21, 2001

The NY Times popups were incredibly annoying (read: I had to setup webwasher to block them, it wasn't automatic.) They have pop-ups popping up whenever you leave a page (I think.)
posted by andrewraff at 8:12 AM on May 21, 2001

Using a proxy such as Internet Junkbuster can block most banner ads and even some pop-ups. I rarely see banner ads on any given site more than once any more.
posted by RylandDotNet at 10:17 AM on May 21, 2001

The most insidious pop ups I've seen lately are pop ups that disappear when you go to squash the window with the mouse. It's pissing me off royally. Guess I'll have to figure out Junkbuster.

Bottom line: annoying me with pop ups is a sure fire way to guarantee I'll never visit your site again.

The ad banner model has been and will continue to be a total failure.

It's not like I can't find alternatives; that's what I love about the web.
posted by dr. zoidberg at 6:54 PM on May 21, 2001

Chrisege,

I'm running Adsubtract, defaulted to "no cookies." Looks like you have to accept a cookie or Epinions won't know it already served you the x10 pop-up...

so what's up with the "spy cam" web advertising inundation lately?
posted by preguicoso at 7:43 PM on May 21, 2001

I don't mind banners, but popups kill me. I think ads can work, but I have a stake in said technology...
posted by owillis at 10:03 PM on May 21, 2001