bobwarfieldI’ve noticed increasingly that on radio and TV I change the channel if there is too much advertising. In fact, sometimes I find myself getting quite agitated, usually on TV, if I’m trying to get through a program and it seems like there is more advertising than programming. Likewise, when I click through a search result to some annoying full page ad with a microscopic “skip ad” link, or one of the ads that suddenly levitates right over to what you’re trying to read, I’m annoyed.
At the same time, I find I am more likely to notice the ads on a Google search page and wonder whether they won’t get me closer to what I want. If I recognize a name there, I might even click one sometimes, though still rarely.
The Internet has trained me to hate advertising by presenting me with tons of rich media and no requirement that I deal with the ads. I can ignore most of it, and a lot of the valuable media I seek, such as blogs, has little to no advertising. Lately there is a trend for some to start injecting ads into my reader stream, and I immediately delete these without looking. If they get too numerous, I’m sure I’d take the blog out of my list. As Techcrunch points out for Twitter, such behavior would be annoying.
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