Seems like on a lot of web pages these days, only about 50% has to do with content. The rest is ads and other clutter. Fine - my mind can filter that out with no problem, and advertising equals upkeep of the site and free content for me. I get it.
But when there is a bar near the bottom of the page that I actually have to click to get rid of - or worse - an overlay ad, do you know what I do? I close that window. I’m looking at you Cracked.com and Yahoo, sites I would normally use more. But when you do obnoxious things like that, I direct my traffic elsewhere. To say nothing of the fact that I would never, EVER purchase or use anything advertised in that manner.
I can’t be the only person who clicks elsewhere on first site of this crap. How fucking annoying does advertising have to become before they realize it’s driving some people away?
This isn’t quite the same thing, but I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to complain about it: websites whose comment section updates in “real time”— which sounds like a great idea, but in practice it means that whatever you’re reading suddenly gets pushed off the screen whenever someone posts a new comment to an upstream thread. Slate.com is one primary offender.
Just let us READ, please. No shoving shit around, and no obstructive overlays (the modern day equivalent of pop-ups).
The other side of this is I complained here awhile ago about the newpaper ads that were half sheets folded over the top of a section I wanted to read, or worse yet attached to it. I have to deal with getting the stupid ad out of the way before I can read what I want. The reaction here? Meh.
So, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that sort of reaction to the ads you are talking about from most people. I hate them too, especially when I’m on dial up, but they must work and it appears most folks don’t care.
Adblock solves 95% of this. There are still websites that hard-code a time-delayed intrusive window over the content. They get one F5 from me. If it happens again, I soar heroically away, never to return.