Are Internet Ads Getting More Intrusive?

[Rageaholic]

Because I find myself getting more and more annoyed by ads lately. On a lot of big name websites (particularly news ones), you can't even get passed the home page without popups taking over the screen. And these aren't always the ads from sponsors or some random advertising agency that they make money off of. No, these are ads from the website telling me to get a free subscription, to upgrade to their super special awesome subscription, to download some app for their site, or most annoyingly, to like them on facebook.

And I still wouldn't mind this as much if these unnecessary advertisements didn't cause so much lag when I enter the site (I've even had to reboot my computer a couple of times.) And considering that some of these ads are just telling me to subscribe to more crap from their site, I don't know why they're even there.

[MadMike]

It's all advertising in general, I think.

TV shows are cramming in more and more commercials while cutting into the actual show. It's especially bad with TV movies. Between them cutting stuff so they can show it on TV, and showing commercials every 5 minutes, I refuse to even watch a movie on regular TV anymore.

Magazines are getting crammed with more and more ads, to the point where you have to turn past so many pages to get to the actual content, you lose all interest in the magazine.

Telemarketing calls were getting more and more frequent, to the point of becoming ridiculous and annoying, until they finally passed laws regulating them and requiring them to abide by "Do not call lists." However, with the number of scammers who don't follow the law increasing, as well as a government that's either unwilling or unable to do anything about it, it's getting back to that point again.

Web pages are getting more and more ads crammed into them, in the form of pop-ups, annoying flashing banners, misleading download links, redirects, etc.

Some days, you can't walk through the mall or even down the sidewalk without someone trying to motion you over to them so they can try to sell you something.

And it seems that ads are appearing in more and more places as time goes on. I see them on pizza boxes, in the envelopes that some bills arrive in, and even in public bathrooms. That last when was when I realized how out of hand things had gotten.

The whole thing is counter-productive. I think people are so saturated with ads, they've become desensitized to them. I know I don't even notice them on web pages anymore. Either that, or they get so annoyed that they'll go to great lengths to avoid and regulate them. Telemarketing laws got passed because people were getting tired of telemarketers calling so often. Some people cut down on or quit watching TV because the commercials became excessive. Some people do all their shopping at home so they don't get accosted by salespeople. More and more people are using pop-up blockers and other ad-blocking technology on the internet.

Advertising may have been reasonable at one point, but the advertisers got greedy, and kept pushing and pushing, until people were no longer willing to listen. And the advertisers have only themselves to blame.

[HYHYBT]

That's the problem, though: the more desensitized to ads people become, the more of them they have to make and the more obnoxious and in-your-face they have to be to get your attention. It's also why the otherwise well-behaved ads many websites have feature things like closeups of gross teeth.

They also have to fight against people's not wanting to see them. One reason I record TV to an old computer instead of a built-for-the-purpose DVR is that I can then do whatever I want with it, including removing the commercials and anything else I don't want if it's something I want to save. But because so many people skip them, they now have to pop them up during the show itself, or even, when they want to get fancy, edit them into the background.

[Sleepwalker]

I use Adblock, so I see maybe one or two ads a week. I had to disable it to try and find what was not making one website not load, and I was amazed at how the internet looked without it. Since I can't afford regular tv or newspaper delivery, that makes my life pretty ad free overall. (movie previews aren't ads, they are the ebst part ofthe movie!)

IMO, get the adblock extension. It's free and good for your blood pressure.

[Ginger Tea]

Web pages are getting more and more ads crammed into them, in the form of pop-ups, annoying flashing banners, misleading download links, redirects, etc.

Fuck Adf.ly that site is the worst for giving you 3 different download now buttons, I wanted to get the skyblocks challenge for Minecraft after a few episodes of Duncan and Sjin of the Yogscast last year, the forum link they provided said go here for it, 5 attempts later I was downloading the zip and not cancelling "random name dot exe"

then I finally upgraded MC from 1.5 to latest build and got the ATLauncher to use the fan made Moonquest pack, that was fine as it was all done via ATLauncher, but I wanted the map mod for vanilla and needed Forge for that.
the first listing (also with 4 stars) google gave me also gave me the run around "to download <filename dot zip> click here and nope that is not the file cancel.

then forge installed (without letting me say fuck off) 3 other 'apps' so I had to have an uninstall and hit the AV.

that day I was on imgur and every time I clicked next it would open a new tab for an advert, Every. Damn. Time.

Ordinarily I would put that down to whatever Forge's buddies did, but a day or so previously imgur (on firefox) would overwrite the page with an advert so I would have to go back one to read what the stupid bear had to say for itself.

A website should not allow its adverts to overwrite the page viewed, but I don't know if its their advert hosts doing it, or some undiscovered thing that I picked up along the way.
If it is imgur's advertisers doing it, they should stop as I have less inclination to continue viewing if I cant access the site cos the page is now showing me some random full page ad.

[MadMike]

That's the problem, though: the more desensitized to ads people become, the more of them they have to make and the more obnoxious and in-your-face they have to be to get your attention. It's also why the otherwise well-behaved ads many websites have feature things like closeups of gross teeth.

It may get attention, but I doubt it's the kind of attention the advertisers are hoping for. It's certainly not going to make me want to buy their crap, and it might even get me to start using adblock software. But apparently these advertisers think that if they start annoying people, they'll actually start buying. So people come up with ways to avoid the ads, and advertisers come up with ways to force the ads on us in other ways. It's all a big cat and mouse game.

[Ginger Tea]

Some of the best adverts I saw in the 90's were for products I would not even remember by the time the show started back up, but the ads themselves were brilliant, perhaps too brilliant as I had no recollection of what they were trying to sell.

One bright spark had an advert that lasted the whole of the break, started off as a normal length for the UK advert and went onto the next advert, then something from the previous advert bled into this, till the end result was all adverts occupying the same space, no idea if first 2nd 3rd or even if it went higher advert was the product or not.

If I saw it on Youtube now, I would just assume it's a sketch lifted from an anthology movie, but I do know it was an advert as it was shown a few times and one of the products was in fact real, I just don't know what.

Edit:
Sometimes it's not the adverts themselves that I find annoying, its the heavy rotation of the same advert (on blip) once it was a car advert with an annoying part of a song (think they used a different part months later) that one the song pissed me off and I muted the advert whilst reading another tab, but for most of the year, any blip show I watch (including he mid roll) is "wrestlers by Josh" Flora advert.

[lordlundar]

See, I get a lot of gripe for using adblock and there's very few sites I disable it on, even trusted ones I usually have it enabled. Whenever I get bitched at I simply reply "It's nothing against the site's people, but even the most benign advertising services lately have been very intrusive and pose a security risk."

I'm more than willing to support content creators, but my system's security will always have a higher priority. Thus adblock remains and runs.

[Ginger Tea]

I'm more than willing to support content creators, but my system's security will always have a higher priority. Thus adblock remains and runs.

I will make sure Yogscast Jessie Cox get their youtube money (some other videos get the skip ad*) and blip content creators (mostly TGWTG contributors) get ad revenue, but if its imgur and not something my end causing my issues then I will if needed block anything that throws at me aside from the image I clicked on to see.

*Ad skipping, at least its an option on youtube, but when you want to make sure they get their cut of the ad revenue there is conflicting info on when to skip, one channel guy says as long as it reaches 30 seconds it counts another says if you skip at any time they get nothing, 30 second ads I have nothing against, but YouTube has a growing number of 5 minute adverts, hell someone got a 30 minute lets play advert for one channel in front of the lets play he was about to watch.

Ridley Scott I believe was behind the hour long Sainsburys Christmas advert that started showing in November, who is going to watch an hour's advert on a five minute video?

When faced with too long an advert and conflicting info of if they get paid after the skip button is pressed or not I find myself refreshing the page till I get a shorter advert.

Some play through's I sometimes leave going over night, I've seen all of Jessie and Dodgers Deadspace 3 but I fell asleep during one where I was 5 episodes behind and woke up and it had gone back to the beginning twice, so as I don't pay per GB I don't mind letting them get ad views when I am AFK or fast asleep.

[Bloodsoul]

My website uses ads… sort of. See, I'm working on rebuilding it from the ground up and until then I've put up a page saying "After these messages, we'll be right back!" In the middle of the page is randomly displayed one of a dozen-and-a-half commercials I pulled off of YouTube, mostly videogame commercials from the 90's (remember Crash Bandicoot? You can also bask in the glory of Steve Balmer selling Windows, and don't forget about Crazy Eddie — his prices are INSANE!).

[Ginger Tea]

During the 80's this was the only UK advert this product ever had, if you cater for a wider audience perhaps add it to your ad break.

[Andara Bledin]

A website should not allow its adverts to overwrite the page viewed, but I don't know if its their advert hosts doing it, or some undiscovered thing that I picked up along the way.

Actually, it's the ads doing it, and most websites actually prohibit that behavior, but most ad servers are, well, kind of shit at keeping it out of rotation.

I'm a regular at Ars Technica, and they have a moritorium on any ads that have popups or overwrites (with some allowance for a certain type of expanding ad), and if you see it, they want you to screen shot it, determine that it's not some extension doing it, and post it in the help forum so they can track it down and kill it.

[protege]

See, I get a lot of gripe for using adblock and there's very few sites I disable it on, even trusted ones I usually have it enabled.

I use Adblock on every site. No pop-ups, no sitting through crap on Youtube, no pop-unders, no sidebars, no annoyances. It's freaking awesome Also, if people don't like that I use it, fuck 'em

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah, who cares if they need the ad revenue to keep the site running so long as you're not inconvenienced, that's all that's important...

[Greenday]

What constantly annoys me is seeing ads for stuff I just looked at five minutes ago. I spend a couple minutes looking to see what specific headlights my car has and now I keep getting ads about car parts everywhere I go. I look at an engagement ring and I get tons of ads for rings. THAT bothers me.