Flash Adverts: The Latest Plague
Full motion Flash adverts are the new plague on the Internet. Back in the early days, when animated gifs were first invented, web developers who wanted to be cutting-edge plastered them all over their sites. The phenomenon became known as "dancing baloney" and was widely loathed by the purists. And with good reason. They were unbelievably distracting, and, in the days of access with those early modems, they slowed down the loading of each web page. It was lose-lose.
Fortunately, user backlash was so severe this was a short-lived phenomenon. I'm not so sure the new Flash ads will be so easily seen off. What is driving them is money. Advertising is becoming all pervasive, I'm even experimenting with it on this site. And adverts only pay for results, so the marketing types are trying ever harder to attract our attention and get us to click their beastly little ads. They are an annoyance, and I'm sure most ordinary users see them that way, but while site owners are being paid to display them, they will stay.
The other penalty to users is that they require additional calls over the Internet. So you have to wait for your web site to start loading into your browser as before, but only after it starts does the browser see the code for the adverts and only then does it poll for that content too. Usually this is from a different server of course, so your page can appear to freeze while this new server is accessed, and if enough of it had already loaded that you were trying to scroll down the page, it just stops. Then it goes again, and stops again. It can be a frustrating experience and you shouldn't have to put up with it. Web site owners need to be aware of this problem. At least here I am providing useful links and will not knowingly display irritating animated ads.
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- Mark Griffin's blog
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