We run very few ads that contain audio, and in fact far fewer than such mainstream entertainment sites such as Zap2It.com, etc. -- despite my personal feelings about them, unfortunately audio ads are becoming an increasingly popular portion of online advertising.

The Idol ad is only running for a few days, only appears when all other ads have been exhausted, and only appears a maximum of once an hour -- in other words, only extreme "heavy users" should be seeing it.

If you're seeing it more than that, it's because you don't have cookies enabled or misconfigured -- which isn't anything I can do much about... unfortunately the media has persisted this urban legend that cookies are evil things that most be prevented/destroyed... which isn't close to the truth, but that's a topic for another day.

-SB

Well, it's not the first time I've been labeled a "heavy user"...

Thanks for the explanation, Webby!

I wouldn't mind if it was an ad with sounds... alas, it's a flash animation that contains sound, so to get rid of the sound, you have to either turn off your speakers or disable animations entirely. Most "upper crust" ads with sound have a clearly visible "disable sound" button (Verizon, for one). That's nice.

And, just for the record, it's the FIRST ad that comes up every time I pop over to check out the site.

NOW, of course, there's the screaming ad for my big fat fiance or whatever it is. very cool. {bleh}

-- JV

LAST EDITED ON 01-18-04 AT 01:06 PM (EST)

>And, just for the record, it's the FIRST ad that comes
>up every time I pop over to check out the site.

As I explained in my other post, if that's the case, it's because you've already exhausted all the other ads during your previous visits -- advertisers don't cycle the same ads all over again from the beginning every time you visit a site -- ads that you've seen during your previous visits come into play as well.

Hard as you might find it to believe, advertisers aren't interested in showing the same ad a couple of hundred times a day to the same user (which if you sit down and think about the time that some of the heavy message board users spend on the site, is a rather conservative estimate of how many page views users like yourself generate.)

I understand the ads are inconvenience to people, but as I said, they only show up when you've exhausted every other ad and are all capped at either at hourly or daily limits. And they are only running for a short period of time. Plus its not like we're running ads for items which are not directly related to the content of this website.

I've already talked to the ad network to attempt to ensure all future ads feature mute buttons or no non-user-initiated audio, but I take issue with the implication that only "lower crust" sites are running these ads -- as of right now, the same exact Fiance ads are running on Zap2It.com, among other sites. And for the record, the Fiance ad only broadcasts audio if you move your mouse over the ad -- otherwise it's silent. If you're having to mute your computer while surfing the web, its not solely due to this site, because other sites out there are displaying the exact same ads. Frankly, for the life of me I can't understand why anyone in a workplace would ever chance surfing the web their speakers on by default, but maybe that's just me.

The fact is, there's no way that anything I do is every going to make 100% of the user community happy. People don't want popups, so I get rid of popups. They don't want excessive popunders, so I cap the popunders at a maximum of two a visit. You don't want annoying flashing ads so I try and remove the most annoying of flashing ads as best as I can. If only running a site were as simple as some people seem to believe... thinking that the site can run without popup or banner ads is as naive as expecting a radio station to not play commercials -- nothing scares me more than when I'm listening to the radio and am suddenly shocked into reality by a commercial or on-air plug. But I recognize it's what keeps the radio station broadcasting.

-SB

Thanks for the explanation. Ads are what keeps the site running... I'm willing to turn down my sound for awhile, so Webby won't have to pay some extra bucks.

A 2004 IceCat creation