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How Text Ads Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web
securitas writes "In Sunday's New York Times, Randall Stross writes about How Google Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web and how it is largely responsible for the demise of the odious pop-under ad. From the article: "Without intending to do so, the company set in motion multilateral disarmament by telling its first advertisers in 2000: text only, please. No banner ads, no images, no animation.... Google introduced these ads at the very moment when X10 ads were strewn like chewed gum on every square of sidewalk. X10's pop-unders were accepted at mainstream sites run by companies including Microsoft, Yahoo and The New York Times." Remember that "in mid-2001, X10's company Web site was the fourth-most visited" on the Web. Thank you, Google." I'd actually argue that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made as much of a difference, if not even more.
I see... so Google saved us all from ourselves did they? I seem to remember that even though Google was much talked about in 2000, it had yet to become the preminent search engine it is today.
Perhaps this has more to do with it: Results 1 - 10 of about 7,590,000 for Pop-up blocker software. (0.20 seconds). Taken from Google itself. Pop-ups weren't simply replaced, they were stamped out. They still exist, but not at the staggering, nauseating level they were once.
Does anyone know anyone who ever bought one of those X10 cameras?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
...but what a stretch. Even Hemos notes it:
I'd actually that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made a large difference as well.
( ignoring missing words and all. I have no room to talk in that dept )
Can we please attribute things to where they belong? google may be the second coming of Christ, who knows, but let's try to keep their achievements realistic.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Let's not forget why text ads and pop-up blockers became popular in the first place... People demanded it! I don't know a single person that likes intrusive advertising like the pop-unders and the flash animations that come on top of everything else. What the google ads show is what everyone should have known before... The internet is a place where people come looking for you, and when that's the case, you don't need loud, fancy graphics, you only need enough information for them to identify your product (text).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Maybe Google had some effect, but I think they were just part of the more general backlash against such ads.
Nobody but the parasuits liked them. Everyone savvy enough to know how to turn them off did so. I'd wager some people even quit web browsing over them.
Google didn't want them because 1) they slurp bandwidth and B) they can't be tracked for content and $) because they don't fit the Google "no evil" culture.
Those reasons pretty much coincide with how the rest of us saw them, too. Except for the pervs, that is. (Camera to spy on wife in shower? Ooh, baby!)
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I wouldn't say internet ads have been tamed. Sure there are less popups and popunders. But whatabout all the new ones which cover the page (Fox is a major offender here), or noisy ads (I don't know if America got subjected to the jamster ads much).
CBC Sports
CBC Hockey
Reality has a liberal bias
Are there adverts on the internet then? WTF...
True enough though, for a while I couldn't be bothered to filter Google's ads. Nowadays I find RIP and CustomizeGoogle keep the interface nice and clean.
Useful links for those that like to make their own mind up:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
http://www.customizegoogle.com/
http://rip.mozdev.org/index.html
http://adblock.mozdev.org/
http://www.pierceive.com/
And for those that might bleat "without advertising, many sites would fail" I say Good. Let those sites fail. Give me micropayments and an honest relationship.
Everyone who is using AdWords knows that Google introduced standard (graphical) banners in skyscraper format a while ago... The only reason why text ads became so popular is that AdSense was made available in a very simple way to many small web sites that would have a hard time finding paying advertisers otherwise (and of course Google's popularity helped too).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Google Ads made it possible to target advertising dollars in a way marketing managers could only dream of before. Text ads provide pinpoint market segmentation to advertisers, and was probably a strategic move do avoid higher bandwidth costs associated with Images. Once Google lights up their dark fibre, watch for an increase in Google Banners by companies looking for brand recognition rather than sales. Those like x10 (maybe your favorite VOIP company)who have no focus and listen to their ad agencies blow millions dollars by tossing stuff at people who are interested in their stuff.
Why? the Netscape browser was dying, IE Version whatever was the buggy, proprietary, virus-target of the day only other thing out there, and because MS is also in the advertising game via MSN, etc., they weren't about to give users the ability to turn off a specific class of advertisements without making it odious.
Then Firefox declares war via pop-up blocker, and within a short time the early adopters (who are really the most important predictor of future technological trends, methinks) were moving in droves away from IE, and I don't think I was more than a few days behind them.
Same time, Google's model saves me bandwidth and eye strain, and --ka- boom!!-- between the two the 'Net returned to being a useful tool with one tenth the amount of pain.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
"Another sale to someone annoyed by our ads."
"Good. Up the placement for next week."
There is no moral here, people go for what works. For the webmasters (hosting the ads), AdSense text ads means more money because these ads are targeted and received more clicks. They are also less annoying. For the advertisers, text ads means less money because these ads are targeted and received only valuable clicks. They are also quite well perceived. So I would say the decline of popups is not due to text ads but to *targeted* and *less* intrusive ads. BTW, popups (being for ads or not) are considered something bad (in terms of ergonomy).
Million Dollar Screenshot
Many sites have even more invasive ads now that everyone is using pop-up blockers. Things like the annoying paid links (double underlined) with huge tooltips inserted in the middle of articles, dhtml pop-overs, "infomercial" style text ads in the middle of articles.
There was some research done recently showing that the sheer number of (non-internet) adverts we see every day has just caused people to develop better ways of filtering them out.
You misspelled ad nauseam.