Yahoo, your banners...well, they suck.

The BBQ Pit
1

Do I Yahoo? I do. I do Yahoo. Specifically, I use YahooMail. It’s free, it’s easy, I can access it from anywhere, and I don’t have that huge a problem with spam on it. I realize the service is free, so I’m not griping about the service. In fact, I have no complaints about the service at all. Consider this simply constructive criticism.

Your banner ads…I’m just going to come out and say it, Yahoo. They suck. And please understand that when I say ‘they suck’, what I mean is, they suck goats. And when I say they suck goats, what I’m trying to get across is that they suck all known types of goats and fourteen heretofore purely theoretical types of goats.

Here’s an example (requires Flash) of one of Yahoo’s ads:

http://us.a1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/1-/flash/sbc/121202_lrec3.swf

Someone approved this? Someone got paid to do it? Is there not enough cash at Yahoo to get a functioning digital camera and/or scanner? This looks like someone created it by grinding their ass on some kind of computerized ass housed inside a giant ass.

This, however, is la piece de resistance:

http://us.a1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/1-/flash/sbc/tv/013003_kid_monster_tv_price.swf

Would you buy anything this ad was selling? If clicking on this ad would get me a two hour blowjob from Jennifer Connelly while the Beatles travelled through time to play music for us, I would never know, because I’m not clicking on it. Nothing about that ad makes me say, “I’ll have what he’s having, thanks!”

Guys, you have to spend money to make money. I want you all to do well, because I don’t want to use hotmail. If the ads are working, well then, color me astonished and tell me to get bent, but I can’t help but think you could do better.

2

You shouldn’t Yahoo! anymore.

3

I use Yahoo Mail. And more than the banners, what I find annoyong are the pop-up ads they display. Recently I’ve gone and tried out PopUp Stopper from http://www.panicware.com . It works like a charm. Simple and clean. And free.

4

I know this is not what you mean at all, but being a “programmer” myself (and of course they mean web designer, since they’re talking about homepages and not MS Word or something) would not be “freakin’ out” at that fact that that… guy did what he did. His (theoretical?) page probably has three times the necessary code and looks like crap besides. Argh.

5

If you’re running Windows 95/98, do this:

  1. find the “Hosts” file in c:\windows
  2. make a copy of it.
  3. edit the copy in notepad.
  4. The following line will essentially prevent your browser from loading anything from that site. Add it at the end of the file:

127.0.0.1 us.a1.yimg.com

  1. save the file and exit notepad.
  2. Rename the current “Hosts” to any backup name you want.
  3. Rename the copy you just edited to “Hosts”.

For info for other versions of Windows and a “Hosts” file that blocks practically all ad servers, see everythingisnt.com - This website is for sale! - everythingisnt Resources and Information.

6

www.adshield.org is another place for a good, free pop-up and banner blocker.

7

Still, it’s nice to see that Jeff K finally found a job in ad design.

(http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/)