The best (and worst) online ad types

Written by Adrian Holovaty on June 26, 2002

An interesting chart on Business 2.0 examines the different types of online ads (banner, pop-up, etc.) and how effective/annoying they are. The clear winner: text ads, which are, according to the chart, the least annoying and most effective.

A few comments:

I agree that text ads are best. I've been using the Internet since 1994, and I'm pretty sure I've only clicked on a banner ad once. (Cut me some slack. It was one of those stupid "punch the monkey" ads, back when nobody had ever seen anything like that before. To this day I regret it.) I have, however, clicked on text ads. Google does a decent job of giving you advertising based on your searches.

"Intrusive" is not a good thing. Two of the ad types on the chart give "intrusive" as one of their positive qualities. What the heck? I didn't get a degree in advertising, so I'm no expert on ad strategy, but to me that's a load of crap. "Intrusive" is not a positive quality. If a business wants to sell its products or services to me, it had better treat me nicely.

I'd be embarassed if I were LATimes.com. Sucks to be listed as a "check it out" example of pop-under ads. Gee, doesn't that just make you want to get your news there?

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