By Laurie Babinski
Editor in Chief
The multicolored butterflies were everywhere.
With the launch of MSN 8.0 last week came yet another milestone in Internet advertising. Web surfers using common sites such as The New York Times and The Washington Post encountered a new monster: the full-screen pop up. Click on a link to any article, and a black full-screen ad flashes with the electric blue silhouette of a man in a butterfly costume.
“The Internet just got better,” the ad says.
But it’s not better with the butterfly as MSN claims it is. Pop-up ads, lay-under ads, blanket ads, little bugs that fly across a browser window — they’re all symptoms of an advertising world begging for the common man’s attention, according to a February article on CNN.COM.
Internet advertising began with a relatively mundane but user-friendly approach — the banner ad. But static banner ads, advertisers soon discovered, didn’t capture the average Internet users’ attention, the primary goal of advertising.
Frustrated, but inventive agencies, backed by their hired-gun Web design gurus, invented the more effective — and thus more annoying — advertising scheme surfers know as pop-up ads. It was annoying when they first began popping up five years ago like gophers on a golf course.
But alas, advertisers again became disenchanted when they found out that they had underestimated the public’s intelligence. They recoiled when surfers began to — gasp! — simply click the windows away by locating the tiny “X” in the right-hand corner that killed their creation. Other even smarter users downloaded pop-up killer programs that made the ads disappear all together.
Foiled again, the ad people scurried to work like mice chasing after cheese. In cohorts with even more Web gods, they concocted a plan to sneakily embed their ads into the text and add obnoxious sounds to attract the surfer’s attention if the whirling graphics failed.
Soon, motorcycles zoomed deafeningly across Internet pages, with no real way to exit out of the ad — Internet users simply had to wait the ad out or find the tiny “X” somewhere on the add to close it.
These ads were everywhere, with two or three making magical appearances every time surfers clicked links. And by gosh, it seems they had found it, a way to advertise that couldn’t be circumvented by the average Joe messing around on his home computer.
It seemed that, for the first time, the common man had lost.
But from the dark recesses came an unexpected champion, the Internet service provider.
ISPs such as America Online and MSN are aiming to combat the ads to keep their customers happy, customers who have shown little loyalty and are willing to migrate from ISP to ISP as new versions or services are announced.
America Online was the first when, in mid-October, the Internet kingpin decided to eliminate pop-up ads — for the most part — in a bid to make its customers happy.
The decision coincided with the launch of the latest version of AOL software — AOL 8.0 — which is expected to draw heavy competition from the simultaneous release of the new MSN 8.0. The new policy will be phased into effect as the company’s contracts with advertisers expire. AOL will continue to use pop ups to advertise its features and those of its parent company, AOL Time Warner Inc.
“This new policy will contribute to our most important goal — a better member experience,” said Jon Miller, America Online’s chairman and chief executive, in an Associated Press article announcing the decision. “By ending third-party pop-ups and merchandise sales we are giving our members what they want.”
But not without a price. ISPs are able to cut down on obnoxious ads by charging for their services, often demanding anywhere from $9.99 to $39.99 a month. And even that can’t prevent the pop ups that result from accessing Web sites that use the ads for revenue, a practice that promises to continue unless Internet servers want to pay to access pretty much every Web site known to man.
So the reality for the common Internet user? It’s a sad yet necessary byproduct of a capitalist society, but here it is: if you don’t want the pop ups, you’ll have to pay up.
Until the general public is willing to deal with subscription fees for everything from access to the Internet, access to online newspapers and millions of other sites, there is no logical solution.
Sites and service providers, to keep costs down, will always depend on advertising for their revenue, leaving surfers to deal with the cadre of ads that cry for their attention.
So while pop ups are a nuisance, invest in a good pop-up killer and take the punches to keep the Internet sites free and the prices of service providers low. The Internet is lauded as a forum for the free exchange of ideas — let’s keep it free.
October 31, 2002