Yeah, I know. AOL = Lame ISP. (If they can even be considered an ISP). But I have to maintain an AOL account to monitor advertising we place there on behalf of our clients. And I occasionally use the Instant Messenger app through the service, so I don’t have to download AIM separately.
Occasionally, I’ll log in and find an article teaser on the Welcome Screen that interests me. Like today’s “How to Avoid a Wreck: 10 Tips from Driving Pros.” I’d love to read something like that. It might even save my life some day. So I click on it…
…and end up dumped at the “AOL Autos” section front, pissed off that the link didn’t take me where it promised it would. Moreover, I can’t even find a link from the section front to the article I wanted to read.
AOL - Ya got me again. Fooled me with marketing into clicking to some place I didn’t want to go. Good for you. That foolish click just landed you an incremental penny’s worth of ad revenue.
Seeing as how you’re making money off me, though, wouldn’t you think it might be a good idea to actually deliver on the fucking consumer’s expectation for once? What would be the big hairy deal if you at least put a link to the desired article on the section front so I could find it?
Pardon me, AOL, but your strategy is showing. Tuck it back in before others realize you’re just trying to drive traffic en masse and that you have no interest in delivering on your content promises.
Or would you rather people avoid clicking on promotional links at all, because they’ve become accustomed to being led down blind alleyways instead of to the interesting things they clicked on?
I know, lame and silly, but I’ve done this a dozen times in recent weeks and it drives me crazy when someone promises me an interesting article and never delivers. Fuckers.