truly ridiculous reporting2003.03.18

Been meaning to blog this for over a week, apologies.

A member of CHI-WEB recently posted a link to an MSN article that discusses how users feel about online ads.

According to the article, users are “irritated by online pitches”. This is not rocket science. A toddler could figure this out. As the article itself states, people generally don't enjoy TV ads or the ratio of ads to articles in a magazine, either. One of the crosses we're undeniably forced to bear in the early 21st century is being bombarded by advertising 24 hours a day every single day. And you thought Minority Report was science fiction.

The MSNBC article, in and of itself, is not noteworthy. What is noteworthy is the brainiacs who entered the article into the system, or perhaps even the supastars who created the CMS and set up all the different things you could control in the article template.

Ads, you see. An entire article devoted to how annoying online ads are. With nearly a dozen web ads on the page. And pop up windows.

Below (minus pop up windows) I've included a screenshot of just the above-the-fold portion of the page. There are more ads than this on the page, but I thought that the portion the user first sees to be particularly ironic. Ads are helpfully highlighted in fuschia to bring home my point.

Did anyone actually think before putting this article online?

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