Peel-Away Ads Present Loads Of Potential…. And Problems
Don’t you hate unpleasant surprises?
Like the time you discovered that attractive woman was actually your best friend’s girlfriend? Or that fateful day you realized it wasn’t technically “cool” to listen to Phil Collins?
Well, I also hate unpleasant surprises. Thus, I hate these new “peel-away” ads that have cropped all over the glorious world wide web. Basically, these ads look like cute, snuggly bunny ears which, when you mouse over them, “peel away” to reveal an ad. Bunny fetish aside, I find these suckers irresistible to click. So naturally, when I noticed on Monday some peel-aways on ProgrammerMeetDesigner’s website (one of the start-ups in my shared incubator space; mentioned in this article), I found myself ready to click. And herein lies the unpleasant surprise: before even clicking the peel-aways, simply through mousing over them, I noticed they were disabling the site’s login button. I soon notified the PMD peeps about their advertising mishap, and they quickly took the ad down.
Fast forward to yesterday: I’m checking out John Chow and I noticed his peel-away ads, served up by his company, TTZ media. Low and behold, his ads made it impossible for visitors to both a) hit the search button and b) close that annoying yellow, top bar (ad) without scrolling away from the ad unit.
Next, I cruised over to TheTechZone (Chow’s other site) on a hunch he was probably running the TTZ unit there, as well. Hunch confirmed, I noticed some more bugginess: after mousing over an ad, the links on the page covered by the larger hit area (a 500 x 500 px box) stopped working until I removed the mouse from the area all together - even after the ad had “peeled back.”
To surmise everything I’ve said thus far: peel-aways totally suck. Every peel-away ad I’ve seen is riddled with problems, small and large.
This phenomenon validates several points I’ve always found to be true. First, web 2.0 is always in search of the “next thing” - and we often rush to implement this “next thing” prematurely, without adequate test-runs. It’s like auditioning for a Shakespearian play the day after you overcome a major speech impediment: simply not practical. T-t-t-t-to be nor not to be. Definitely not to be.
Secondly, our tendency to rush into half-baked ideas is commonly driven by monetization goals. Most peeps in the 2.0 sphere – and John Chow is definitely an exception - are so abysmal at monetizing their traffic/users that they’ll jump on any bandwagon ad-scheme that comes their way. Money, in other words, supercedes care and content- and in the end, poop gets rained over everybody. Dirty, stinking poop. Additionally, at the end of the day, as my friends at PMD confirmed, none of these new schemes monetize with vastly more success than the old ones.
As a corollary to this article, mark my words: the first ad company to make a bug-free peel-away unit is going to make good money. Private jet and house in the Hills money. Even enough money – sorry, John Lennon - to buy love. So, if any of you programmers/wizards out there can fill this need in the www, please contact me. I’ll find you funding tomorrow.
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