I'm certainly no online ad expert, aside from the fact that I see and ignore most of them! The only two ads I can recall ever interacting with were from John Hancock and GE. The Hancock ad caught my attention because it invited you to enter what your imaginary retirement goal was, and then it would whisk you off to a site to tell you how much to put away each year. Useful stuff. The GE ad was more recent and allowed you to create your own scribble/artistic piece and email it around. Not so useful, but playful and relevant to their new "Imagination at Work" theme.

The latest trend I've seen are ads that pop up within your current window and obscure content completely. There's usually a small "skip it" box hidden somewhere, but generally, these ads have the effect of pissing me off for the 30 seconds they appear.

Anyone an online advertising expert? Anyone else seeing interesting online advertising trends?

Aren't those oxymoron's?

I hate all online advertising. I most broadcast advertising. I don't mind print advertising, it's less invasive. The web is for text and information. I also use the pop-up blocker function in Safari which seems to work.

How does the pop-up blocker know which are good pop-ups (like the Speak Up comment window) and which are bad?

I must admit that I have played (and enjoyed?!) almost all of the Orbitz pop-up ads that are mini-games that shoot you off to their site. Once you close the Orbitz window, you can keep playing in the game window without being re-sent.

While all pop-ups are annoying, the games themselves are pretty simple but fun. By far the best of the Flash pop-up marketing campaigns, I believe.

there is a definite lack of conclusive research concerning online advertising in any form. accountability numbers are interesting, but they tell us little of how this medium might affect branding or any of the fuzzy stuff on which consumerism thrives.

Google text is the only advertising that I read. their contextuality is more accurate in my experience. more importantly, anyone willing to forego more invasive means gains that much more credibility in my subconscious scorecard.

as far as the "beauty" of online adverts, I'm with Kiran, I just want information -- give it to me straight! there are offensive amounts of commercial entities trying to fool me into clicking on something that obviously is of no interest to me (eg, those Windows "warning" messages).

How does the pop-up blocker know which are good pop-ups (like the Speak Up comment window) and which are bad?

There is no such thing as 'good' pop-up windows.

(To answer your question, though, pop-up blockers typically block any automated pop-up triggered by a page load or a page closing.)

How does the pop-up blocker know which are good pop-ups (like the Speak Up comment window) and which are bad?

I don't know how Safari works, but in Mozilla, it only blocks non-requested pop ups. Speak Up -- or any thing you click on for that matter — works fine for me, and I can only imagine the same can be said for Safari. Some commercial pop up blockers for IE aren't so robust, unfortunately.

I'm not sure if you type fast or if I type slow :)

On-Line advertising more often than not is just annoying—the principle behind most advertising, that people get used to it and thus come to hate it less (radio, TV, magazines, newspapers), doesn't usually apply to the Internet.

When on-line advertising started on hotwire.com years ago, people clicked on the banners a lot—because in those days, it was fun to click on anything you saw. That steadily diminished though to the point that you'd be fortunate to get something like .5% click-throughs. And so the demand for better performance, better ROI kicked in; there was even talk of advertisers only paying the hosts only if someone clicked on the ad AND bought something on the site. Fortunately that didn't hold because an ad cannot and should not be responsible for everything.

So there had to be some justification for paying for on-line ad space at all, and a simple banner wasn't going to be enough. When Unicast came into the picture with its glorious pop-up windows that were destined to be blocked by ISPs and browsers, we started getting those little boxes that slide over and obscure content like was mentioned above. Or there were bigger, much bigger ads. And perhaps the most popular ones were those deception-based ads—such as, "You're computer is totally fucked" or "a total babe just sent you a message and its waiting for you" or "your internet connection is slow. Click here to test!"

I still think most advertisers are a tad confused about how people use the internet...most advertising gets completely filtered out, and those who do advertise and get noticed probably don't help their brand at all, just based on the fact that people see "invasive jackass" before they see "useful product."

I like what salon.com does about on-line advertising. You can pay a small annual fee and not deal with any ads; or, don't pay, but watch a dopey commercial/pop-up ad once per day. It's kept the site alive, advertisers continue to sponsor them, so...that's cool. It casts them in a far better light than the dick who puts this moving sheet in front of your screen that blocks the content and requires a microscope in order to find the "close window" button.

As it is with so many other things, Flash should only be used if it positively contributes to the brand message. Sometimes it isn't necessary. Sometimes the small Google text ads might be the best move.

I hate online advertising, eventhough we do a fair amount of it in our firm. A fair number of our clients ask for it.

To me, it's just one tiny level above telemarketing. I just don't use the web like other forms of broadcast media. And online advertising isn't going to change that anytime soon.

I don't know nothing 'bout online advertising or nothing, but everyone should see this page for the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

It is not too much to say that I got chills at how good it is. Flash at its best.

The only online advertising I've ever clicked on is a Google text ad (and that's because I was looking for information on or looking to purchase something specific). In that context, the "ad" is welcome "information" and no longer an "ad." That's an incredibly powerful distinction.

I'm pretty convinced that my bias against Flash has more to do with what people generally use it for (intrusive advertising or "look at me aren't I cool" intros). I love however, independent flash games and cartoons.

I work for the local newspaper as a web designer. The web director isn't allowed to do anything online without advertisers and their banner ads. That's how the newspaper makes money. So, what most of you may not be thinking about is that execs across america have green in their eyes and that means that the almighty ad will always be here. Yes, it's terrible, it's intrusive; however, it's also a necessary evil for the monkey's turning gears. Corporate fat-cats have no care for your or their user's "web experience". They care about revenue. It's simple.

Flash is becoming a web standard (or is already). It will be the future especially since it can be used in conjunction with leading server technologies such as ASP.Net, PHP, and ColdFusion. I don't know anyone without at least a Flash 5 plugin.

This thread has somewhat turned into an 'online advertising is good vs. bad' discussion.

Advertising is rarely preferred by the user, but it's certainly a reality. It's what keeps a lot of web sites going, and, as such, I'm willing to tolerate it.

Justin's comment is valid. Flash is everywhere. When used right, it can be effective, and some of the larger flash ads, I think, are effective. What I found interesting is how Google Ads are also being seen as effective. Why? I'm not sure. It could be because a lot of people love google, so how could anything from google be bad? Maybe it's because they're targetted ads...customized based on the particular content of a site. Maybe it's because they're not obnoxious. Just polite, quite little reminders sitting over on the edge of the site. Honey vs. vinegar argument?

My boyfriend and I were just discussing Google's text ads the other day. They are by far some of the most useful ads I've ever seen, and I do occasionally click on them.

The other interesting thing is the ads that you see on Google's search pages, or AdWords. Speaking as someone who has some projects I want to promote through advertising, without becoming a dreaded One of Them, Google Adwords look like the way to go. Most people (geeks) I know do click on them at least occasionally, and Google works hard to make sure they're both relevent and unlame. (They refuse ads that do not meet fairly stringent editorial guidelines: no excessive capitalization, even at the beginning of words; no excessive punctuation, etc.)

That's what I attribute to their apparent success and proliferation throughout the web. They're not intrusive, they have a high (relative) value to the viewer, and they are forced to be unlame. Heck, they practically stand out because they're text instead of images or Flash... maybe that's the secret.

And of COURSE it's Google... How can you go wrong? :)

That I attribute their success to, that is, not the other way around.

One thing that's interesting is that Google still has not gone public like Yahoo. (last I heard) Still privately owned — but you can be sure that when it does, it will be worth a kazillion dollars for about 10 minutes.

I wonder if this fact allows them the freedom to control their advertising more; for the benefit of all of us.

Tan,

I've read several things (books, articles, general ranting) lately that make a very persuasive argument in claiming part of what's wrong with "corporations today" (follow: our country now, follow: capitalism) has to do with the concept of public ownership of a company via stock. Obviously it's not people owning the stock that is the problem, but interest groups and other companies.

CEOs and so on are rewarded for looking for short-term growth opportunities by basically whatever means possible because the increase in stock makes everyone happy. Whether that's cost-cutting measures that result in a lower quality product in the long run—or moving operations offshore, or even cooking the books with sketchy but 'mostly' legal practices, or doing something that generally doesn't meet with their personal and business ethics—doesn't matter.

I, for one, hope Google never goes public. Then they can hold onto the reins of their own destiny instead of constantly fearing the stockholders, and we're all far more likely to keep liking them.