Intrusive Hover Ads: Misleading Measures of Success
November 10, 2008
Hover banner ads are the equivalent of pushy salespeople. They’re the rose vendors trolling restaurants, interrupting patrons’ dinners with their unwelcome sales pitches. We’re there to eat dinner, not buy roses.
I took a screenshot of the latest annoyance: hover ads without a “click the x” option to make it disappear. I can’t read the text under this interruption, and I can’t get rid of it. The negative impact is a double whammy – one hit against the content network since I can’t read their content, and one hit against the advertiser since they just annoyed me.
People eager enough to read the content will try to click this away, thereby boosting the ad clickthrough rate. Even if I don’t click it, the fact that I accidentally moused over it to make it expand will register as an interaction. Yes, I saw it. Yes, I may even click on it to push it out of the way. But are these really accurate measures of success?
November 18, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I’ve just come across an unclosable hover ad and fired off a furious email to the advertiser. I was particularly annoyed because I was forced to clickthrough and then could not get back to the page I had been trying to read.
Like you, I think websites using hover ads will just shoot themselves and their sponsors in the foot.
November 19, 2008 at 1:50 am
wonder if the advertiser even knows. might be their web agency, their media buyer, or the content network to blame. either way i agree – everybody loses, especially us as the content consumers.
November 23, 2008 at 4:30 am
I hate hover ads. They are so annoying. Just like pushy salespeople.
Since I went to your blog, why don’t you go to mine
http://Nerd10101.wordpress.com/