I just witnessed the most disgusting ad presentation I’ve ever seen on the internet. The ad itself wasn’t intentionally meant to offend, but it’s format did something that was inexcusable.
Being a native New Englander, I often got to Boston.com to check out sports stories. That’s what I just did a few minutes ago. Right there, in front of me, was a story “Northboro Native Killed in Washington DC Accident”. A photo of her shows a pretty, young fresh faced young woman, with a beaming smile. Now that I live in the DC area, I was especially intrigued by this. I was once 22 and lived in DC. Young. Idealistic.
So I went to click through to read the story. In the corner of my eye, I began to notice a ‘growing’ ad coming across the page. One of those ads that form images across a web page. In this case they were images of the walking footprints of what looked to be that of a hiker. The footprints continued across the woman’s face and would not let me click through to read the story. That’s because just as I pressed down on my mouse, the ad crossed over the exact spot where it was pointing to. Suddenly, I was transported to another site, the landing page of the ad. Tourism in New Brunswick.
When I finally got back to the site I wanted to be at and clicked through the story I wanted, I began reading:
A Northborough woman and Amherst College graduate beginning her career in Washington, D.C., was killed in the nation’s capital yesterday morning when she was run over by a garbage truck while riding her bicycle to work.
…beginning her career…killed in the nation’s capital…run over by a garbage truck”…riding her bicycle to work”…
Her young life snuffed out just like that. Full of promise, full of life, now gone.
But we want to show you this ad first - the ad is more important.
This is definitely not the way to do things, folks. These ad formats, while enticing, should not be used by news outlets. At least on their front pages. News outlets cover news and news is more often bad, or in some cases, tragic. It isn’t worth the ad dollars.
Advertisers shouldn’t necessarily shy away from using these formats, but they should be very judicious in where they buy them. They should look for sites that viewers come to be entertained. I don’t care how effective they are. Use another formats on front pages of news sites.
No Comments » Posted on July 9th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn
Loading ...