Surf*Mind*Musings

Immediacy Insterstituals Popup Embedded Banners Pop-Under

The timing of banner ads varies dramatically. The end result can be a continuum of cleanup tasks, equivalent to a cross homestead pickup session. Here's a bit of a taxonomy

Taskbar -- attaches to program management habits & ram fear

Popup - Visual block of target

Popunder -- via taskbar and occluded preview

Magnitude

Magnitude is also a catch-all for dirty tricks like including close window controls in the ad (and augmenting that with window detritus in the background), and animation. Particularly distracting is synched animation in top bar and sidebar locales, but animation in general has a particular effect on the visual channel of human resources. Also notable are "capture error" inducing ads, which promote inappropriate, but learned responses, like reproducing a close X widget in a banner ad.

Interruption Popup Embedded Insterstituals Pop-Under Banners

In [Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "surfmind" hasn't been defined.] , there are three resources in the user's head to model -- vision, output, and cognitive. [Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "surfmind" hasn't been defined.] extends the architecture a bit but the notion of considering the interlocking nature of these aspects of user activity is sound. The top entries in the interruption dimension cross all 3 user channels as well as racking up points in all 3 interruption measures.

Interruption

Interruption may simply delay the user's completion of their current goal.  In the case of a popup, a learned move to the "X" may be executed very rapidly, although a better way to do this is with ctrl-w.  Alas, some popups are trapping the ctrl-w key sequence it seems.  Defeating the learned action to close popups seems to be a motiviation for ad designers given the prevalence of fake "X" window controls within the ads.  Popups also create a signifcant input channel burden, requiring several seconds of visual targetting to close the ad and return to the page. Beyond delay, significant interruptions in user flow can disrupt the cognitive channel causing task information and goal stack forgetting.

The insterstitual approach, in some ways the most humane, is often the most damaging, particularly in the YahooGroups case. Because YG requires a complete page load for it's ad, the duration of distraction enables significant short-term memory decay. In most cases, newsgroups, unlike the occasionally visited web-ui, have a rich body of supporting knowledge that protects the thread or group context from forgetting. However, YG's billboard flotsam is very disruptive of [Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "surfmind" hasn't been defined.] .

Elsewhere on the net

• Gator, one of the most obnoxious popup spawners, gets sued. From one view, Gator is quite sophisticated as it spawns ads related to the content of the current browser page. However, it's sneaky installation methods and the difficulty of uninstalling makes this product extremely disreputable
• Thu, Aug. 08, 2002 Pop-up pain appears to be passing
• Croc'o'Lyle on poup ads
  • Clickz - Ad Policies or Ad Hoc, suggesting a potential additional affect on users, that of negative emotional impact to the brand
• The Right Way to Popup from youngpup. Suggests a method that allows users to still invoke popup links in a new window, while popping if clicked normally.
• E-Marketer
• A fraud lawsuit of the use of fake error message banners