ugh... i was sure i closed that bold tag...

I agree with some of what your saying bakerstreet. I personally think that not only will a person not pay for something that they can get free somewhere else, some people are inclined to not pay at all if it cost to much or not worth buying even though they can't get it anywhere else.


The bottom line is that if web sites can get together (for once) and actually force a way of advertising to work (better ad designs, better placement, more about the ad being seen and not so much a click-through or magical on-mass increase in revenue for the company represented by the ad) it might actually be possible to change the way business is done on the net. Advertising can actually make money and subscription could actually make profit (as long as they too, are designed, placed properly, and give specail site specific content the inhances the life of the purchaser)


It can be done. I believe only when websites come together and also stop thinking about there profit and start thinking about how they will be helping others nd making the world a better place to be in for all. Once you believe that the content your giving, sharing, or selling is worth more to the person than you and helps make the person a better person, that is when both parties come away with something worth more than money ever will represent.

Ad placement is an iffy issue, and the one thing that makes them hard on the internet. If you place them well, people claim that you are obscuring content, or at least distracting from it. I have seen commercial style ads, i.e. you load a full page ad for 10 seconds or so before it continues on to the content, but they go against the original intent, distributing content quickly and efficiently. People expect commercials on tv. It would take a lot of getting used to on the internet.

If they simply make ads good enough that people are *happily* distracted by them, no one will complain. I don't get mad about ads in magazines, and the layout isn't that much different than websites. The ads are very different, though...

Funny that you should mention subscription dating sites. I've been working on a new UK one for a few months now, and hope to launch it soon. All of the issues you discuss are ones that I've had to take into consideration, and I'm probably lucky to have a web agency background to learn from.

Yes, I'm still lurking folks...

As soon as adverts are relevant to the issue at hand (read: the site you visit) can they have any chance of being a) succesfull; and not considered annoying. Extremely hard to do so, though.

Urgh, grammar fell overboard somewhere up there, but you'll get my point.

As a rule, superstitials (popup adverts) work the best, but alienate your viewers. Interstitials (those 10 second ad-breaks) work almost as well as popups, but if done poorly can totally destroy the flow and continuity of a site. Banners and skyscrapers (large vertical banners down the side of a page) seem to keep the balance between results and user-friendliness, as they're very similar to those magazine adverts bakerstreet talks about.

The real unknowns at the moment are those (sometimes annoying) DHTML adverts which appear in a layer on top of the current page. Some of them move around the page, some of them play loud sounds, and some require user interaction to close them after they're done. I would imagine that they have a similar result to that of superstitials, but if done right could potentially be only slightly more intrusive than a banner.

I find pop-up ads extreemly annoying-- and if I get anymore, i'm downloading that "pop-up stop" program!


Also, i hope that this Thread isnt inspired because Wincustomize is considering charging everyone a subscription to download wallpapers, etc.. We already paid enough registration fees for Stardock's products > (i was wondering about that after i saw the "yes, no? for text ads, etc" Vote area ).

If Wincustomize is having financial problems , maybe you guys ought to consider a donations link..,, and those unobtrusive little ads with the arrows you can click on to roll up after your done with it.

The ads, pop-ups and buy this or that are like the african bees! They keep "stinging you"! I just hate it!

If people are going to be charged by the download, then most of them will migrate to the free-sites!

grayhaze: Those DHTML adverts you mention are absolutly the most annoying thing since "punch the monkey". I seriously will not frequent sites that use them. One of the sites in our commmunity has them periodically and I find that I really don't visit there at all anymore. Their odd shape and movement make them harder to kill, and some of them don't have the close window button at all. That is no worse than the javascript-trick windows that pron sites use, imho. They take control of my desktop away.

Imagine picking up a magazine to read an article, and having the ad next to the words drift over in front of what you are reading and start flashing at you. No magazine publisher in their right mind would *ever* allow that, and yet on the internet... Anything that obscurs the content is out of the question. Pop-UPs obscure the content.

Pop-UNDERs drain resources from my computer by opening extra windows that I don't need, and most of the time don't notice til an hour later. The worst ad scripts don't bother to check if there are any idental windows already open. The other night, after realizing that my taskbar had overflowed, I closed 12 *identical* pop-unders. That, imho, should be a crime punishable by stoning or pressing.

The main point of my previous post wasn't necessarily the technical mode of advertising, but the fact that there is little, if any real branding in advertising. Most of it is obscure, as though the consumer wouldn't click the ad if they were aware of the product or service. That says bad things to me immediately. Where are the ads we get in GQ, Vogue, or any glossy, high-end magazine? Think for a moment about every woman you have ever seen read Voque or Cosmo. If possible, would they buy a magical device that would remove all the ads? Hell no, the ads are as big a draw as the magazine.


Those people pay *insane* amounts to be seen by fewer people. If you don't believe me, go look at the cirulation numbers for a top-of-the-line glossy magazine, and then compare them to the pageviews-per-month of a major portal. I think they don't buy into internet advertising in the same way because they are mortified by the idea of being represented by such filth.

There is no art in internet advertising, no class, no beauty. Until there is, it's doomed to fail.

The main thing to remember bakerstreet is that advertising on the net and advertising in magazines are two very different things, with very different aims.

The main purpose of an Internet advertisement is to attract your attention to the point where it is your sole focus on the page, and to draw you away from the site you're currently looking at by getting you to click on it. If you're comparing to magazines, that's like trying to get someone to drop the magazine they're reading and to go and buy another. The whole aim of Internet advertising is to get click-throughs. If a banner/popup/whatever doesn't get click-throughs, you end up with one very angry client.

Magazine adverts on the other hand usually aim to push a brand or concept into your subconscious, so that you will act on the impulse it hopes to generate at a later date. None of the companies that advertise in Cosmo or Vogue really believe that you'll drop the magazine and go out to buy their product immediately. It's all about suggestion.