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Commercials Come To The Net (After This Word)
ctwxman writes "Say it isn't so. Full-motion commercials, when you go to click off a page, are coming to a website near you! The New York Times (standing in a bathtub with an electric iron required) reports: "Beginning tomorrow, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising." Unicast, the company responsible, says the ads will play regardless of pop-up blocking. "The only format that loads completely before it is allowed to play, the Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time."
I work in TV where commercials pay the freight. Is this so wrong on the net? It's not what we're used to, but maybe we're asking for more than is reasonable. I just don't know." I think I hear the whip swinging back, but harder ...
The ads sure don't display for me on Mozilla 1.4 with this handy click-to-play Flash hack I saw on another Slashdot posting. <sarcasm>Oh, darn.</sarcasm>
Some people, particluarly in smaller countries, pay for Internet by the MB. How much are these ads going to cost?!
Very true. Advertising on unlimited broadband is merely a nuisance. Full video, multi-MB sized advertising on a metered low-speed connection should be a crime. Why should people have to *pay* to receive corporate advertising?
That's like the high-school kids who pay Nike to be a walking billboard for the company. If I'm going to wear clothing that has large corporate logos, names, or slogans printed on it - they damn well better be paying *me* to do it.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
i've opted out of operating systems that tell me what i can and can't do with my computer.
i've opted out of television unless i can get it without advertising (canceled my cable but the bastards just won't come and shut it off).
i will certainly opt out of any site that requires me to be face-fucked by advertisers before accessing their content.
the truth is, advertising-supported media will always cater to those kinds of people who are susceptible and receptive to advertising: in a word, imbeciles.
i say: kill all the advertisers. content will then come from two sources: individuals and communities who are truly passionate about their subject matter, and those with content that is actually worth paying for. i favor this for web, tv, radio - all of it. i want to just pay for my fucking content and get it free of all the time-wasting, soul-destroying, mind-manipulating, insulting, humiliating shit that drips from the lobotomy scars in advertisers' foreheads.
have i mentioned that i don't like advertising?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
No, you're both wrong... of course no one forces them to provide content free of charge and no one is forcing you to visit a site that "tricks" you into downloading an interstitial.
It's capitalism--if you don't like the ads, stop visiting the sites, if you don't mind them, keep going there. If enough people don't like them, the company will change its ways or go out of business. It's that simple. The choice is yours 100%. Personally, I don't visit sites with pop-ups or interstitials, one offense is enough for me to know not to go back to that site, and even if I were paying for bandwidth, after it happened once, I've learned my lesson and can add that site to my hosts file as one to block.