Rumblings from the keyboard of Pete Eveleigh,
a web designer and developer based in Gloucester, UK

The “Power” of online advertising – does it have any?

Posted: May 15th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Web Design | | 2 Comments »

I sure I’m not alone in getting annoyed by online advertising. I can tolerate the unobtrusive ads such as Adwords, perhaps even a discrete banner ad but increasingly I’m seeing pages plastered with irritating, animated flash ads.

The worst culprits have pages who’s content is all but obliterated by a plethora of fading, folding and otherwise flapping animations all vying to grab my attention so I grab their product. I never have, nor do I think I ever will.

Yes, I could take steps to block these annoyances, but since I work in marketing I can understand the reasoning behind placing ads and I have nothing against online advertising per se. Besides, why should I!

So, my question to you is this; “have you ever bought anything after seeing, and following an online animated ad?

Please direct your friends to this post. I’d really like to get a reasonable sample size


2 Comments on “The “Power” of online advertising – does it have any?”

  1. 1 Rich Mehta said at 3:26 pm on May 15th, 2009:

    No, never have. I do purchase stuff online but I never have done so because of an advert. To my knowledge, I haven’t even had my awareness of a product/service raised by Internet advertising, either. I just tend to mentally filter it out when visiting a web page.

    Also, those adverts that obscure the page and make you click and “x” before they’ll go away are a great way of making sure I never actually read the web page in question and go elsewhere for my information. It’s tacky, unprofessional and a very poor practice, IMHO.

    R

  2. 2 Chris said at 1:03 pm on July 15th, 2009:

    I have to admit that I have bought items as a result of adverts on a website – some not so good and some that have really helped.

    The multi rotating images do annoy me and I don’t tend to have the patience to sit through the sequence but static adds get a casual glance and if something catches my eye I’ll follow through on it.


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