A lot of folks are talking about Jakob Nielsen's latest posting: The Most Hated Advertising Techniques. There aren't many surprises in there. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that he's telling many of us what we already knew--it's just that he's helped to quantify that knowledge.
Before I even had a chance to connect the two dots, though, Jeff Boulter decided to see which of the hated Techniques are in use on the Yahoo network. His findings are in Yahoo's worst advertising techniques.
His conclusion, after noting that Yahoo offers a free pop-up blocker for IE (as part of the Yahoo Toolbar):
Still, it’s time for Yahoo to clean up their act. A lot of these ads are for trashy sites which can’t be paying much anyway.
Oh, how I remember the arguments about pop-up ads at Yahoo. If you're a flame-lover those were good times. If you're anyone else, those were dark times indeed.
Posted by jzawodn at December 06, 2004 09:18 PM
The most outrageous ad I saw on Yahoo was mouse over ads. I just passed my mouse over an ad to point to the email link and it had a sort of drop down explaining the product.
I wish I still had those emails I'd sent to the devel list during that whole thing. Let it be known that Y! popups did not happen without my loud mouth trying its best to stop it. :)
The funniest Yahoo ad is the billboard you can still sometimes see on 101 going through San Francisco. It aims to parody a cheesy motel ad surrounded by flashing lights, but actually expresses directly everything which is worst about the brand and its realtionship to advertising.
An ironic joke by someone a the ad agency, I always thought.
What about the google toolbar scam then, It supposed to block popups,, have you noticed that some pop ups dont get blocked, and usually they are from certain URL's.. Would I be imagining it if I suspect that they are paying google money to get a code to unblock the popup..
When I was in the Bay Area last month, I was incredibly impressed with the Yahoo! Local ads I saw all over the Mission District in San Fran. Why can't on-line ads be that funny?
Is it time to amend Zawinski's Law (aka the Law of Software Envelopment) to:
"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail [and block pop-ups]. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
Yahoo is dedicated to getting all dial-up users onto to dsl.
How is this done? When clicking an email msg, ad appears at top touting switching to dsl...I am then a hostage for 5-10 minutes for each msg. Even when I "refresh" or go back, I am still a hostage to those Yahoo ads. Worst Day...took 1 hr to respond to 10 msg...same ad each time.
Are we being punished because we decide to stay with dial-up?
Why does Lower My Bills.com and this Dermitage Ad for skincare keep appearing on Yahoo on my mail. It is annoying me. How do I make them go away permanently. I hate these popups!
