I think I am too old fashioned for it. I have always thought or imagined in line ads as a non-obtrusive, non-distractive way of presenting readers products or services they might be interested in. However, all but one use a technique called mouse-over, i.e. if your mouse incidentally hovers over any one of ad-placed texts, the ad is automatically displayed in an overlay.
I do not know why but that phenomenon distracts me. I do not even use the so-called share-this type of widgets in my blogs; I use a static one instead. But that's me: I have long ago stopped considering myself as a conformist, on or off line. As far as I can see, most bloggers are happily using them and it does not look like anyone is complaining. Hence, getting old, I suppose. Some feedback on this will be nice. Am I the only one?
And the exception: Google again! They have recently rolled out a feature called expandable ads. Guess what? They are exactly doing it like I wanted. The text-ad is placed but no mouse-over. You have to click on it to display the ad in an overlay. Sadly, it is available to US publishers only.
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I tend to agree with you here. I spend quite a bit of time building my content and I hate it when obtrusive ads pop up and ruin the content!
ReplyDeleteI have not heard of the new Google system, but I am rather interested in it! I wonder how it will work out!
After writing the post, I visited the AdSense Blog if there is an update, and they clarified an issue with publisher location:
ReplyDelete"Expandable ads are available to a limited number of U.S. advertisers, who can then select the sites they’d like to target – so your location as a publisher won’t limit your eligibility."
In spite of this, it is not clear (at least for me) how the ads will run. We'll see.
Personally the in-line text ads can be quite ontrusive, especially when they just randomly pop up all the time. I also dont like that it makes lots of links on your page.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that I found two allies. I was about to feel like a control freak.
ReplyDelete