[thelist] OT advertising impotence rant (was: open source development network)

[aardvark]

> From: dave gray <dascott at wam.umd.edu>
> 
> the company I work for recently started testing a banner ad rotator on
> one of the sites we have up, and I didn't realize quite how absurd it
> was to have banner ads on a site if you have any kind of business plan
> at all until just now.

i sometimes refer people to 
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9709a.html, where Jakob talks about 
the dropping click-through rates in addendums...

i saw another study somewhere (can't find it now, anyone know it?) 
that talks about how people are starting to tune out animated 
rectangles in prominent locations on sites... which is impacting 
sites that use animation for the *site*, not as an ad...

[snip]
> which brings me to deception in advertising. you know what i'm talking
> about. banner ads that look like dialog boxes. they are aimed at a
> specific target audience: people who don't know all that much about
[snip]

this keeps catching my dad... he clicks the little win95-looking 
'close' buttons on banner ads thinking that will make them go 
away... not only does it piss me off for the advertising snakiness 
(are trick click-throughs good click-throughs?  should their clients 
ask them that?), but my UI side gets *really* pissed off as they 
usurp the few UI standards we have left in order to trick users...

> my name is dave, and i'm a web developer...

my name is aardvark, and i'm hankering for a horde of ants...