
This is the latest pop-up kind of advertizing. The portal promises that the advertiser gains because this latest method of pop-up advertizing "just jumps out and grabs attention" and that the brand "just cannot be ignored". I'm sorry but when did advertizing become this annoying. can you imagine how this pop up ad would massacre the surfing experience of a person? world over people are moving towards non intrusive advertzing platforms because there is a big realization that advertizing that is annoying does not transalte into ROI. It may grab attention but also creates an ill feeling about the brand in the minds of the consumer.
The reason why Google's SEO based text advertizinng was a runaway success was because it was simple, direct and clean. It didn't take away from the surfing experience but ingact complemented it. Facebook too, while contemplating and Ad platform took pains to ensure that the advertizing didn't detract from the user experience. Companies like Facebook have to be particularly careful because user experience is what makes or breaks social interactive sites. That's why this portal's latest venture is puzzling and frankly a bit annoying. This also sends a wrong message to your most valuable asset, your website's subscriber. By pissing them off, by putting annoying pop up advertizing, you are turning them away from your website!
Another side of ugly is the latest Yahoo Search Ad in India. The Ad shows a skydiver with a stutter failing to count from 1-10 in time (due to his stutter) and then eventually crashing to death, with the tagline going "Sometimes every second counts". I don't see how this Ad is even remotely funny. Its in extremely poor taste. As a marketer the rule of thumb is you do not make fun of people disabilities. Simply because, marketing is a very powerful tool. It has an incredible power to influence huge masses of people and must be used to promote positive ideas. I truly believe this. A brand that infuses or reinforces positive ideas will also be looked upon in the same light. When a brand tries to ridicule a group no matter what their ethncity will always end up leaving a bad taste and that's a risk a top notch brand like Yahoo should not take.

1 comment:
Hi,
I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be very good.. u write well.. Why don't you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog ‘Living The Lie’ took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;
BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!
This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)
Cheers,
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