Those Aggravating Ads on the Internet

Advertisers are constantly looking for ways to push unwanted ads into our faces while we surf the 'net.

First came the banner ads. These are still being pushed into our faces. Some of them just sit there on the web pages, but more and more of them are using flash to blare out their presence. A few of them are extremely obnoxious. Those are usually the ads for dubious products.

Most of us tend to just ignore banner ads, so then the ad makers tried using pop-up ads. This tactic caused another webpage to jump into our faces, obscuring what we really wanted to see. Annoying! A few sites would cause more than one pop-up to populate. This caused a flurry of programmers making applications that would stop pop-ups. For awhile this solved that problem for folks who, like me, were and still are totally turned off by pop-up ads.

Then some clever jerk came up with pop-unders. Grrrrrrrrr! I hate those as well. The pop-up stoppers don't seem to have as much effect on pop-unders, so now we have to disable JavaScript to surf without pop-unders.

The latest ads to get our attention on websites use a method of JavaScript called IntelliTXT. The script finds 'keywords' on the page, double underlines them and when a cursor passes over the keywords an ad pops up, obliterating the content beneath the ad. Since there are no apparent ads on the page when the site is first accessed, this appeals to a lot of advertisers and is being used more and more.

Personally I find this method of shoving ads into my face extremely annoying and furthermore, I'm not the only one that feels this way. While some of the folks on the web using these tactics are just trying to offset the costs of maintaining their sites; others are trying to make a living or at least a decent profit. I can understand that, but the stuff that gets in my face like most of the tactics annoys me enough to leave the sites and not go back. (Another thing that will cause me to leave is sound blasting at me and no way to turn it off, but that is irrelevant to this tale of woe.)

Google Ads do it right. There they are, sitting in plain site. They don't annoy me by jumping in my face or causing an obnoxious pop-up, pop-under or obstruct the content I am trying to view. They explain what they are and if I am interested, I can click on one. I have in fact clicked on them on occasion. I have even ended up making a purchase using a Google Ad.

One thing all of these methods of advertising does, is make revenue for folks who provide the ways to stop these annoyances. Currently I am using a trial of Super Ad Blocker to see how it works. So far I like it. The price is perhaps a little high for what it does, but I may buy it anyway just to stop all those ads from jumping in my face. Super Ad Blocker also includes SuperAntiSpyware, an excellent spyware remover.

This site Sillysot (funny name!) has a little program (Intelli: An Intellitxt link remover)that will just stop the IntelliTXT stuff, but it works best in Firefox. It is supposed to work in Internet Explorer as well, but I couldn't make it work. It doesn't even require installing; you just drag the Intelli to your links bar.

I wonder what the next thing will be in the world of Internet advertising!

Martha