When I was a kid we used to play the “Alligator” game. We’d pull all of the sofa cushions off onto the floor. Then we’d leap gleefully from one cushion to another all the while cautioning each other that if you fell in the alligator pit you’d be eaten alive.
Web browsing has become a lot like the “Alligator” game.
Pages on content portals absolutely bristle with advertising. If you’re unlucky enough to mouseover an ad.. BAM you’re caught. The ad blasts out expanding onto your screen. It cheerfully drags you out of whatever it is that you were -actually- researching and forces you to confront this new content. 3-5 seconds are wasted just looking for the how-the-fck-do-I-close-this-damn-thing button.
Even worse (and more insidious) RichMedia vendors gleefully report elevated interaction rates.
10% of the page viewers moused over the ad and expanded it
The average
When I’m researching something I take special care that I don’t accidentally trigger an expanding ad. I’m deep in
research mode.. and pausing to collapse an expanded ad is annoying. So I carefully mouse around the ads.. and scroll the text.
