dancing baloney

"Ad-Supported" - The Scariest Words On The Web

I have watched the latest developments in on-line advertising with some concern. The chief culprit, in my view, is the Flash movie. It is technically very clever and some of the things that creative people can do on this tiny pallet are breathtaking, they really should qualify for some sort of award at the Oscars.

And therein lies the problem. When you visit a web site it is because you are in search of something, a piece of information, some news, whatever. It is not likely to be because you want to watch the adverts on it. However good they are, however clever or entertaining, they are still a distraction from the real purpose of your visit. The same applies to television. Advertisers don't seem to have got the message, ironically enough since messages are what they seek to communicate: the viewing public hate adverts. We want to watch our favourite programmes and so advertising breaks are an annoyance and a distraction, even though we all know that the very entertainment we enjoy is "ad-supported". So why am I concerned?

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.

Mark Griffin

Mark has a long history of working with computers and the Internet, he has delivered presentations and courses on many topics over the years. His opinion is actively sought and highly valued.

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