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Stupid MSM advertising tricks: Boycott GE Capital, media polluter—and hope it stays away from e-books
December 17, 2009 | 1:33 am
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By David Rothman
We’re not anti-advertising, and in fact, TeleRead is constantly fiddling with ads to make site sustainable. But may I tell you how much I hate sound ads that are popping up on news sites, without visitors requesting the noise? An accidental mouse rollover in the wrong place will bring on the torture.
GE Capital advertising has even polluted the home page of the New York Times. A list message from an irate Times reader, as I recall, was headlined “The End?” Does the Times have any idea of the goodwill it is frittering away? How much difference is there between this and a “Make Money Fast” site?
Alas, the contagion is spreading. I’ve just seen—and heard—GE Capital’s dreck sullying the MSNBC site. I can’t even remember the words of the message, I’m so angry. I have no need for GE Capital’s services, but if I did, I would boycott the company and send my business to competitors. These are really horrible or clueless people, in fact probably both.
Meanwhile, yes, I know the Catch 22 here: I’m giving GE Capital some free exposure. I’ll just have to trust the intelligence of TeleRead community members. Believe me, you don’t want to do business with this company.
Same for companies that insert obnoxious ads in e-books. GE Capital is a terrific negative example from the Web. I just hope this outfit stays the hell away from books.
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Comments:
Wow dude, really? Do people still surf the web without the AdBlock Plus add-on?
Dear David,
My name is Ben Plomion and I work for the GE Capital Corporate Communications team. You can follow me on Twitter @GECapitalNews. I wanted to bring to your attention that in order to hear the audio in our banner ads, you had to click on the flash banner or mouse over it, which is when the audio starts.
Here’s a site where you can see how it works.
http://apps.eyewonderlabs.com/adWdrVideoSpace/ad/86734/approvalJSTags.html
The last thing we wanted to do is to have audio starting automatically. This is a nuisance and I am sorry if we gave this impression this is what we were trying to achieve.
Thank you for sharing your concern with us.
Kind regards
Ben Plomion
Manager, Communications
@GECapitalnews
First, Ben, thanks for your note. We love to present all sides.
Second, very shortly after I made the post, I added language you that you may or may not have seen. I said: “An accidental mouse rollover in the wrong place will bring on the torture.”
That’s what happened to me and perhaps to others with complaints about the ad. While, technically, you have to request the video and sound, the reality is that it can appear anyway by rather common accidents. I normally can roll over pages with impunity.
You know what would be a nice quick cure? Changing the ad so surfers actually had to CLICK. Would that be possible? If you did this on the ad, no matter where it appeared, I would be thrilled to publish the news.
I’m open minded on this and hope you’ll be, too.
Thanks, and happy holidays regardless of our differences!
David Rothman / 703-370-6540