Stardate 20010925.1210 (On Screen): The advertising wars continue, and the newest idea is to put a frame in the middle of the browser -- it ain't a seperate window, it's an object sitting in the middle of the current window -- which contains advertising. Either it sits there for a fixed time and vanishes, or it can only be gotten rid of by clicking. The sites and advertisers are still are thinking in the wrong terms: they're still thinking "captive audience", they're still thinking "push", and they're still thinking "obnoxious, in your face". This isn't going to improve the effectiveness of advertising, it's just going to cause backlash and increased sales of
advertising blocking packages which, if they don't already stop this, will soon be able to. They still haven't absorbed the understanding that the viewer ultimately controls the experience on the web because he controls the computer which retrieves the data. Advertising will only succeed when it is invited in by the reader. (By the way, yesterday I finally got fed up with Norton Internet Security and I bought AdSubtract Pro and ZoneAlarm Pro. I'll probably be installing them in the next couple of days; I'll let you know what I think of them.)
(discussion in progress)
