For the Advertisers
We, the citizens of the World Wide Web, are not a television audience. Even if we were, you aren't giving us much good entertainment to make up for watching your banners and other ads. Unlike TV, you don't have Seinfeld, South Park, or old reruns of Dr. Who to keep us glued to the screen. If your ads get too annoying, we are going to turn off the graphics or go somewhere else. The web is an opt-in environment, and you'd better get used to it. We might click on your ad if it is something we are interested in anyway, but we are more likely to do so if it is a text ad with some real information in it.
Yes, that's what the web does - it informs. Put some information in your ads, and if we click on them , there better be some real information on your web page too. We are tired of seeing "we are the best, buy us". We want to know what makes you think you are so much better than the others. We are tired of seeing dancing chickens with a "click here". Haven't you noticed yet that we aren't clicking? Just why do you think text links have much higher click through rates than banners?
You ad agencies and graphic artists are messing up. You are trying to turn banners into miniature television ads. Barring that, you try to turn the web pages into a magazine, or a billboard, or a neon sign. You have a whole new media to work with here. Learn it. Quit trying to go back to that old stuff, we've seen it before. If we want to see it again, we can get off the web.
Many of us would also appreciate it if you would stop following us around with cookies and spyware without our express permission. If you want demographic data, we'll be happy to provide it for you, for a fee. After all, the Nielsen families get paid, why should we? At least give us something else in return - free ISP, coupons, sweepstakes, preferably money. I, for one, am going to go right on deleting cookies received from any site that doesn't give me a return.
For the businesses that use advertisers, please - give us something on the page besides twenty-five bouncing banners. If that's all we see, we won't be back. We are not unintelligent, you aren't going to get away for long with running commercials as your content! You are dealing with a fairly educated group here, we aren't going to fall for simple hype, we want facts, statistics, technical specs, financial statements, humour, entertainment, something besides just ads. If you want us to come to your site, give us what we want. Furthermore, did you know that your page just stalls if one of your ad servers is down? Maybe if your sponsors put up some tasteful small banners, they wouldn't get so overloaded, and we could see your page - assuming there is anything other than the ads to see there.