An open letter to all online advertising Web designers:
I don't click on your pop-up ads. I don't. I won't. Knock it off. At what point, in what meeting, was it decided that the best way to connect with potential customers is to assault them with irritating pop-up ads while they surf the Web for things they ARE interested in? It makes no fucking sense.
When I'm on Excite.com, and I try to surf elsewhere, I don't need an ad popping up telling me all about a Speed Blaster Upgrade. I don't fucking care. It's just another fucking window I have to close. Do you honestly think inconveniencing me constitutes a sound marketing strategy? It's like shopping at a grocery store and having a stock boy race by and slap a "10% Off on Baby Wipes" coupon on my forehead. First off, that would really piss me off. Second, I don't fucking need Baby Wipes.
And stop with the swirling little animation ads that appear in the smack dab middle of the page I'm trying to view. That's not working either. I want to read the text behind that annoying fucking thing, but no, I have to sit back and wait for the full animation segment to wrap up so I can close the ad and read the page unhindered. I can assure you, that does little to impress me and makes me even more apt not to ever, fucking EVER, buy your fucking product.
I understand that it's your job to come up with innovative online marketing vehicles. But you simply have to fucking realize that your goal here is not to alienate your audience by irritating us to the point of lunacy. If I want your stupid ass product, I'll go looking for it. So, why don't you, oh, I don't know, put a nice non-intrusive ad in the corner somewhere, something that catches the eye without prompting a flood of fucking additional windows to open. After all, I'm surfing for news and information here. I did not log on so I could play a perpetual fucking game of digital whack-a-mole.
I would also like to point out that I think pop-up ads and, to some extent, cookies, in some ways represent, to me, some sort of tampering with my computer. I know you think you're just gathering valuable marketing data, but the fact is you're fiddling with the settings and preferences of my computer. MY computer, not yours. I'd appreciate if you just kept your grubby fucking hands off my computer. If, for example, you came into my house to see what sort of cereal I eat and what brand of light bulb I favor, I'd have pretty much free range to send you out the door with my shoe buried heel deep in your ass, and I have to wonder, really, what the difference is when it comes to MY computer.
I hope you take my comments under advisement, and that you will, in all due haste, go fuck yourself.
Thank you.
Posted by Ryan at October 3, 2003 02:21 PM
Stumble It!
