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Flashing Ads on the Internet

Advertisements certainly have their place on the internet. How else would you pay for websites? Government grants? Do everything with volunteers? Guilt-ridden PBS-style beg-athons?

But today I went to an economic/political blog and found a flashing ad in the right margin. I tried to cover it with a popup window, but that didn't quite work. Then I enlarged the font of the website, hoping that would bump the flashing ad off screen. That too failed.

Long ago -- back when "call waiting" was a new high-tech phone option -- somebody told me how he got a telephone call from somebody who immediately asked, "Can I put you on hold?" He responded by hanging up; it made his day.

It's not quite as fun as that when you quit going to a website because of one of those obnoxious flashing ads, but it still counts. It's hard to believe that anyone would put up with them. What does it say of a person or society who does put up with flashing ads?

Comments

Anonymous said…
You could use firefox and the Add-On, Adblock Plus. This blocks most ads and also speeds up your browsing experience as it saves the time that the ads take when loading.

Of course if everyone did, then who would pay for the internet?

If you are like me, you will enjoy the ad free environment so much, you might not worry too much about who will pay?

Tom in Orlando
Tom, I already use Firefox and Adblock. They work well. That's why it surprised me to see this flashing ad in the margin. Maybe it was written into website and doesn't register as an ad.
Anonymous said…
Boonie, I recently lost a computer to an obnoxious virus. To give my self added protection, I added "no Scripts" to Firefox.
It's a bit of a pain, but I can control which scripts run on my computer when browsing. Initially you need to take action on all sites, even those you trust to allow scripts to run. I've been using it for a couple of weeks and slowly, it's accommodating my browsing habits.

It probably would stop the ad that you were complaining about.

Tom in Orlando
Tom, thanks for telling me about "noscripts" for Firefox. I downloaded it. It sounds like I probably won't know what to think of it for a couple weeks.

But it's worth a try because I have had script problems before.