Pop Up Advertising Continues to Suck

djchristensen sent us a link to a yahoo article detailing those obnoxious pop up ads from souless marketroids whose mothers don't love them any more. I own a ton of X10 stuff, but I'll never purchase another item from them. And thank god that the modern web browsers have helpful options like 'disable window.open for this domain' rendering this sort of torture harmless.

Comments

That does it...

[Mike Schiraldi]

A story on how Yahoo's testing pop-under advertising, and it's running on... Yahoo.

That would like it if boycottadobe.com was made with Adobe products...

<meta name="generator" content="Adobe GoLive 5">

Oh, er, i mean...

In honor of this story...

[joshwa]

... I'll change my homepage from Sneakemail to PopUp Killer-- for those of us on Win32 who can't run Konquerer.

Re:How do you disable popups in mozilla?

[ajs]

Acutally, you want to put that in your user.js file, becuase prefs.js will be overwritten when you change your preferences, or when Mozilla feels like it.

--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)

Re:Thank god for Konqueror.

[aonifer]

1. Disable pop-unders and pop-overs.

Mozilla does this. In fact, it does it better than Konqueror (though there's no ui for it, yet).

2. View the Web in anti-aliased fonts.

I've found anti-aliased fonts to be over-rated. Crappy fonts still look crappy and good fonts don't really need anti-aliased.

4. Add bookmarks to specific folders/submenus.

Mozilla has been doing this for quite some time, now.

5. Enjoy browsing the Web.

I enjoy browsing the web more with Mozilla than with Konqueror, but YMMV.

Re:Thank god for Konqueror.

[bobwoodard]

If only Mozilla had come up with something so nice, more people would be using it now...

Be sure to check out...
(take out that space after component)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/component s/configPolicy.html

Re:Modern Browsers....

[Chester K]

Hehe, can't seem to find that feature in IE or Netscape?

In IE: Tools > Internet Options > Security > Restricted Sites > Sites
Then add the offending site. Voila, no more annoying Javascript.

If you're still using Netscape 4... well... popup ads should be bliss for you since you obviously like pain.

Pop-unders costing less than other ads?

[btempleton]

I must say I'm surprised to see that the sites are selling pop-unders for less than other forms like banners and large banners. Because the pop-unders tend to form above, and then go below on linux, they are actually far more obtrusive, and that's part of why people hate them.

So the desperate web sites made a mistake selling a more annoying ad for less, and no wonder X10 wanted to capitalize on it.

Not that anything would stop them. A couple of years ago I bought some X10 stuff from them directly (instead of via stores) and they started bombarding me with special offers at least once a day. Worse, every time I would write to get off, the mailing address I wrote from would get on the list, so soon I was getting 3-4 copies of their mailing each day. It took a while to get off, and of course I have not, and will not buy directly from X10 again.

And I used their 30 day disable flag for the pop-under.

They don't seem to be aware how hated it's made them to do both the mass mailings and the pop-unders, and sites selling them need to know too.

Of course, there are two sides to this. Those who like the "free" web realize that the failure of banner advertising is endangering it, and mass resistance to the other forms (stupid as they may be) and ad blockers will only assure their failure, and the eventual loss of the free web.

But I would rather pay for the content then get the linux pop-unders, which don't start on the bottom. I've noticed that in IE they are not so bothersome. Perhaps the ad sites should consider not providing them to linux netscape?

Ironically, tomorrow's Foxtrot is..

[proxima]

Tuesday's Foxtrot. Not updated yet on the official Foxtrot page.

Home security

[quintessent]

I especially like the home security ads with the "home security bunny" supermodels on them. If you're like me, I'm sure you'll be getting one of these. Now I can monitor my home from work, so when the supermodels in evening wear try to break in again, I'll catch them red-handed.

X10 Brandings

[hyrdra]

I visited the X10 site and bought the Remote DVD package. The product is good, but the marketing this company uses is down right ruthless and in some cases counter-productive toward customers.

Upon installing the support software, X10 overwrote all my shortcut icons (the little arrow which appears on all icons) with a tiny X-10 logo. It also changed my Windows Media Player title bar to say "Windows Media Player Provided By X10 Media Player". Also before previewing any movie files there is an X10 logo in the video, right before it begins playing.

And if that wasn't enough, they put their logo in the General section of System Properties, such as OEMs do. And yes, my bookmarks in both Navigatior and IE have all kinds of X10 links.

I uninstalled the software but this still didn't solve the problem. So I called the company and they said this is all in the license agreement. Well, I sent their product back and got my refund and used a registry editor to painfully remove all of the X10 brandings and subliminal messages.

It really makes me mad when a company thinks they have the right to mess with your system. And no, they haven't stopped e-mailing me promotional stuff even after I unsubscribed (didn't know I ever actual subscribed in the first place) from their mailing lists. I am also starting to get stuff in the mail now too.

For some pictures of the brandings, see:

http://root.27south.com/x10.html

I will never buy an X10 product again. Just shows how advertising can actually be bad.