After starting and promoting my own business I came to the realization that advertising is vital. Not only does it promote services, but it also keeps sites on-line by helping pay the bills.
Now, with that being said. I also wanted to mention how incredibly annoying flashing ads that say “You are the 1,000,000 Visitor!”, because they fail to tell you that you’re not. Actually, come to think of it. You’re probably only the 1,000 visitor to that site. I also find it fishy that if I leave the site and come back, I’m still the 1,000,000 visitor.
Other annoying ads include the ones where you have to punch out Hilary Clinton, Jay Leno, Britney Spears and other annoying yet popular people. Really, I doubt winning a Flash game will get me an iPad without some sort of catch.
From my experience on the internet, I found that I love simple ads the most. Either a solid image or text. Animation isn’t always annoying, but it has to be used right. Bad animation is when you have red and blue flashing at you, changing every half second, while you’re trying to read an article on the internet. I realize a free laptop would be great, but that’s not the reason I go to that site.
Please, if you plan to have advertising, keep it simple. Don’t let it crap up the screen and make the site of low quality. If a site is riddled with annoying and unnecessary ads, pop-ups and other trash, I leave and never come back. I’m sure there are others like that, too. I try to keep all my sites as clean and neat as possible so the end-user has a better experience.
Well, there you have my rant of the day for Advertising.