Annoying ads ruining your favourite web browsing experiences

TheDrunkMonk

Rant begin:

How much do BikeRadar get paid for irritating their subscribers with movie banner ads like this annoying t-mobile one above? If I wanted some images of some drama students showing me how receational drugs could lead to embarrassing social situations I'd go to a government website, not my favourite cycling forum, nor would I subscribe to a T-mobile contract.

I'm particularly enjoying putting the ad into focus accidentally and then jumping half out of my skin as one of these daft, care in the community, irritants lays down some phat human beat box to show me how cool I could be if I wasn't with Orange or Vodaphone.

I'm happy to see ads that I can choose to click on to get this website for free, but shouldn't there be a line that website owners draw, when crappy invasive ads distract the user from the site's own content?!!!??

Did my grandfather fight a world war so we can be subjected to this??!?!

I've finished now.

JLM74

Use Firefox Ad Blocker.

Ollieda

at least they are ones that stay in their ad boxes. Lots of websites have those annoying ones that automatically expand themselves to fill up your screen until you close them....no escape!

TheDrunkMonk

No, this one does escape as soon as it gets focus from your mouse.

rjeffroy

Use Firefox Ad Blocker.

+1

giant_man

You shouldn't have to use anything. 9 out of 10 banner ads are fine, they are quiet and unobstrusive but, as I have already said in a thread on C+ office, the T Mobile one is ott in terms of noise and irritability factor. Not as noisy as the armed forces one last year but bad all the same.

pastey_boy

the fact it is such a poor ad doesnt help, if it was that new durex lube ad i would not mind a single bit.

dodgy

Everytime that ad takes focus, I leave the site and go to CycleChat until my next browsing session

fungus_the_muffin_man

All you have to do is have your sound muted.

FFS its not that hard to ignore it. Would you rather have to subscribe to use the site?

dodgy

I don't intend to switch my speakers off or mute my sound based on the cycling based site i'm visiting. I don't have to do that on any other site.

The advert is annoying and invasive and ultimately, probably ineffective

Radioactiveman

Yeah so ineffective no one is even talking about it. :evil:

desweller

Mute your speakers? Nice suggestion if you're streaming music off the PC.

Ad-block does the trick.

dodgy

Radioactiveman wrote:

Yeah so ineffective no one is even talking about it. :evil:

Yes, the advert is annoying me so much I've decided to drop my relationship with O2 and jump ship to T-Mobile LOL!

RDW

There are still people who don't use ad blockers?! You'll be telling me you don't wear cycling helmets next! [ducks]

Incidentally, only just realised that the forum software inserts the phrase 'Nobody likes ads but they pay for the site so please have the class not to whine about them' when you attempt to type the name of a well known ad blocker for Firefox

Ollieda

RDW wrote:

There are still people who don't use ad blockers?! You'll be telling me you don't wear cycling helmets next! [ducks]

Incidentally, only just realised that the forum software inserts the phrase 'Nobody likes ads but they pay for the site so please have the class not to whine about them' when you attempt to type the name of a well known ad blocker for Firefox

IE i believe has an inbuilt ad blocker nowdays so most people must have an ad blocker. Either that or there isn't really a big problem with adverts as I don't have any specialist software for blocking ads but never really have a problem

dodgy

I use IE9 that has built in ad-blocking (InPrivate) but I've never felt the need to turn it on until now.

Velonutter

JLM74 wrote:

Use Firefox Ad Blocker.

+ 2 Works superbly and faster than IE

afx237vi

Velonutter wrote:

JLM74 wrote:

Use Firefox Ad Blocker.

+ 2 Works superbly and faster than IE

+ several more. If websites don't want to lose ad revenue to ad blockers, they should choose more carefully what ads they run.

Stewie Griffin

Had no idea what you were all ranting about as it doesn't do anything while using the forum on my phone. I found out at work yesterday, the whole office found out :oops: :evil:

cooldad

What ad?

Stewie Griffin

It's gone. Take note rioting students, lots of middle aged tutting, that's how things get changed. Power to the whinging masses :P

chocothon

I can see it still. Mind you, some of the stuff that goes on in the background can really worry people. ( Not on BikeRadar I should add )

Like the adverts that seem to have recognised you and popped up a product that you were pretty sure you were looking at recently somewhere else. Its called behavioural retargetting - actually not that sinister, but pretty spooky at times.

Hopefully here will stay free of the boxes and surveys you have to close in order to actually see the content, because they've blocked the screen.

To be fair though, if you've hovered a mouse over an advert nowadays, its a bit like saying "How nice to hear from you" when you get a cold caller on the phone ;-)

(Mind you that could spook them - I might try it).

fleshtuxedo

chocothon wrote:

if you've hovered a mouse over an advert nowadays.

But this ad opens whenever you move your cursor towards the top of the screen, not when you hover over it. It's designed to be accidentally opened by people who don't want to see it. Over and over again. It's very intrusive, and completely sh*t.

AndyRubio

JLM74 wrote:

Use Firefox Ad Blocker.

+1

deptfordmarmoset

FleshTuxedo wrote:

chocothon wrote:

if you've hovered a mouse over an advert nowadays.

But this ad opens whenever you move your cursor towards the top of the screen, not when you hover over it. It's designed to be accidentally opened by people who don't want to see it. Over and over again. It's very intrusive, and completely sh*t.

I think BR's advertising sales people need to think this through carefully. Most people will tolerate a little advertising as long as it sits on the edge of consciousness but when they are confronted with big, heavy in-your-face advertising there is more reason to a)not visit the site or b)install ad-blocking extensions so that they avoid them (I still haven't seen this ad but I've seen 3 threads already complaining about it so it must be bad).

In either case, the result will harm future advertising - fewer will visit the site and those that do visit will use more ad-blocking software, resulting in future advertisers' products having less of a chance of being seen. Either way it reduces BR's market value.

chocothon

FleshTuxedo wrote:

But this ad opens whenever you move your cursor towards the top of the screen, not when you hover over it. It's designed to be accidentally opened by people who don't want to see it. Over and over again. It's very intrusive, and completely sh*t.

Yuk. Mine's doing that now interrupting my own music that was playing.

I had to hover over it before, then it somehow got set off when I was on the reply to post page. Might be deliberately done so that you 'catch' it when you are moving in and out of your toolbar as well ?

balthazar

chocothon wrote:

To be fair though, if you've hovered a mouse over an advert nowadays, its a bit like saying "How nice to hear from you" when you get a cold caller on the phone ;-)

I view anything appearing on screen on rollover (or from any event other than a click) as an intolerable intrusion, and go to some effort to prevent it. The ad blocking is obvious, but I also use a browser extension to block toxic javascript like those "sharethis" blog things, facebook widgets and so on, and I've uninstalled flash entirely. The web is more peaceful now, but sadly many websites are still infected by long menus that drop down on rollover... when did that become acceptable?!

chocothon

balthazar wrote:

...but sadly many websites are still infected by long menus that drop down on rollover... when did that become acceptable?!

Don't get me started ! Presumably some misguided designers think that the user will be entertained in some way by trying to find out which cursor route will actually lead to a clickable link, before the menu mysteriously disappears.

You're not talking about some of the manufacturer's websites by any chance are you ? A lot of the 'howlers' can be removed just by showing a random collection of people the site and seeing how they use it, but I don't think that happens enough.

It is a bit tricky designing something for everyone, where each individual will expect the site to do what they want (or don't want), but you'd think basic annoying design would be in the past by now - at least with the big sites. I think some of this depends on who is in control of the site development - in the past I've been in meetings where dreadful bits of design (from a users point of view) have been forced by some ego maniac within the company. eg. having to register to get a price.

balthazar

chocothon wrote:

You're not talking about some of the manufacturer's websites by any chance are you ? A lot of the 'howlers' can be removed just by showing a random collection of people the site and seeing how they use it, but I don't think that happens enough.

Shops and manufacturer sites mainly. Many are written entirely in Flash so they've lost me already, as I've got rid of it. But the "onrollover" behaviour has, if anything, got worse in recent years, not better. Even Amazon, a paragon of sensible web UI, uses rollover menus, though thankfully sparingly.

If companies pushed their web teams to prioritise user-testing over flashy gimmickry, they'd do better. To many designers, Jacob Nielsen is beelzebub himself, but I think we should be thankful for his sense.

RDW

Another good reason to use a blocker routinely:

https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/majo ... ads-121210