Bad, Bad Ads Manifesto, Chapter 1.
By Tamara Adlin - Posted March 21st, 2008 in All things irritating, bad bad ads
Online ads have been driving me nutso-bonkers long enough. It’s time that I started griping about them in my blog, which, of course, will cause the entire industry to change overnight. So here goes. The fundamental principles of the Bad, Bad Ads Manifesto are:
- It can’t possibly make sense to try to sell someone something by annoying the hell out of them.
- It can’t possibly make sense to put ads on your site that entice people to leave your site.
- It can’t possibly make sense to let another company design a huge chunk of any of your web pages.
- Getting a click isn’t the point…unless your job is to get the click. And then it becomes the only point.
- All of your ads have already failed waaaaay more than they have succeeded.
Let’s explore principles number 1 & 2 just a bit, shall we? I don’t feel like talking about the others right now because I don’t think I’ll be able to be nice.
Principle #1: It can’t possibly make sense to try to sell someone something by annoying the hell out of them.
Principle #2: It can’t possibly make sense to put ads on your site that entice people to leave your site.
And I find myself at a loss for words, because this is so obvious. But, for your sake, and only because I love you, I will try to squeeeeeeze just a few more words out of myself.
Here’s what online ads are like:
- You’re in a conference room. You’re having a moderately interesting conversation about something that interests everyone in the room. You might actually be getting somewhere. And then…the door opens…and in come three highly vocal, sproingy, and un-exercised Jack Russel terriers who have just gotten onto someone’s counter and eaten an entire birthday cake. (not a chocolate one. chocolate is poisonous to dogs.) Go ahead. Continue your conversation.
- You’re watching TV. Something important, like Project Runway, and it’s just about to start. A commercial comes on. An announcer’s voice says “Hey! Change the channel RIGHT NOW! You can watch a the same show two channels over!”
- You are walking through the Gap, your brow furrowed, heading over to the khaki department to make a final dark olive vs. burnt beige choice and suddenly someone in a monkey suit pops out from behind a display of sweaters, and he’s shoving boxes of banana bread mix at you! You get past him, and a sign drops from the ceiling, missing your nose by an inch, proclaiming “No! Really! you want that banana bread mix!” You swat it away…and you are approached by someone in a Gap uniform who says “I’m here to help you. Come with me.” And the bastard leads you to…a display of banana bread mix.
All of these are totally ridiculous scenarios. UNLESS you are surfing the web. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Jack Russells in the Conference Room! Clearly, when I am looking for a birthday cake recipe, what I want is an adventure at a Hyatt Hotel. And I want it shoving itself in my face.
Don’t do the thing you came here to do! Do something else! Or do the same thing, but do it with our competitors instead!
Shopping for pants? BANANA BREAD!
Now, I know that these all make money.
I’ll get to the whole money thing in another post, because I think ‘they make money’ is a bogus argument. It’s like saying “I have a great view from the top of this ladder” when there is a 20-story scaffolding you could climb right behind you.
But think about the customer experience for a moment:
- I’ve just entered a search term and am looking at the recipes I’m interested in and BANGO. Hyatt gets in my face.
- I’m about to look up a phone number and three people are yelling at me to do something else on another site.
- I’m reading an article and Lenovo is in my face, no matter where I look.
The results?
- I notice the Hyatt Resorts brand long enough to be totally pissed at the company (and at epicurious) OR I click the ad and have therefore…left epicurious. They get a nickel and lose my eyeballs.
- I either ignore all of this chaos or end up on another site, having abandoned anywho, when then have lost my eyeballs.
- I train my eyes to completely ignore the word ‘Lenovo’ for fear of never getting to any content I want, or, you guessed it, goodbye PCMagazine. You get a nickel.
Dumb. DumbDumbDumb. My eyeballs have to be worth more to any of these companies than a nickel.
It’s not fair for me to bitch and not offer any alternatives, but it’s friday and I’m tired. so more next week. In the mean time, send me links of stupid and annoying ads. Really. Make me happy by annoying me more.
OH and by the way I am not arguing for better personalization of ads, and better targeting software, and more robots. Nope. Nosirree bub. You’ll just have to wait for more on that though.
Comments
- By Jeff Barr’s Blog » Links for Saturday, March 22, 2008 on March 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm
[…] Tamara Adlin: Bad, Bad Ads Manifesto, Chapter 1 - “Online ads have been driving me nutso-bonkers long enough. It’s time that I started griping about them in my blog, which, of course, will cause the entire industry to change overnight. So here goes.“ […]
- By Ben Wallace on May 29th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
So, online advertising is growing at 25%/yr, yet clickthrough is dropping to less than .18%. Some ads try to hijack attention intrusively or fake some type of utility (thanks LowerMyBills).
However, others are truly trying to give the user relevance and utility.
I’m helping to launch an online ad technology (Adaptive Avenue) that doesn’t extend beyond the ad area, yet gives the USER control to select and receive content within the ad (utility and relevance without leaving the page). This more-polite (GOOD?)means of advertising may help advertising serve both advertiser and user needs - especially when paired with smart targeting. So, maybe it can be part of your alternatives consideration.
- By Bad Bad Bad Bad Ads Dont Make Me Feel So Good | Get Elastic on July 15th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
[…] Adlin shares other examples of bad, bad, bad, bad ads on her blog, Corporate Underpants. And no, in this case bad does not mean […]
- By Adam Covati on July 15th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Excellent post, there are far too many advertisers who are too interested in ‘getting attention’ or satisfying their own egos and aren’t asking the all important question: “What does the prospect want?”
These people and their ad firms aren’t advertisers. They are hacks. They are people from another medium who think their years of experience in TV, or some other world, obviously translates into them being Gurus at web ads.
*sigh*
- By Bad Bad Bad Bad Ads Dont Make Me Feel So Good » Ecommerce Blog on July 15th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
[…] Adlin shares other examples of bad, bad, bad, bad ads on her blog, Corporate Underpants. And no, in this case bad does not mean […]
- By What bad ads do for the user experience « World of Usability on July 15th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
[…] Published July 15, 2008 Usability , User experience Are you a victim of bad internet ads? It seems they abound everywhere, getting very annoyingly in the way of whatever you were trying to […]
- By idris on July 16th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Excellent analysis… i came across many such websites, but never dared to write about them.
- By Amir H on July 26th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Loved this article. Whats even worse are the advertisements on news websites (who offer paid subscriptions in addition to HUGE amounts of advertising already) - that make you “wait 30 seconds…or click here”.
There are too many sites with dumb advertising that it is just too hard to list all of them, and its even worse that half the companies doing this advertising really do not need to.