Advertising on the Internet is a fact of life. Just like with television, newspapers and magazines, advertising pays the bills or at least helps pay the bills.
Before I had my own web site and saw the view from this side of the fence, I had always hated ads on web sites. At one time I even used an old program called Proxomitron that added many useful features to the web browsing experience — not the least of which was blocking ads.
Now that I have a few web sites of my own, I see that ads on web sites do not have to be a bad thing. The advertising I have on my sites pays my web hosting fees and even leaves me a little extra cash every month. Having clicked on a few ads myself, I now think that advertising on the net is a good thing.
I will however qualify that statement with a very important condition: If it is done right. And by “right,” I mean ads that are done tastefully and aren’t jumping, flashing, vibrating or popping open new windows in my face. I’ve always hated pop-up ads and I still hate them to this day and I do not use them on any of my sites. Period.
There is one ad, however, that I loathe even more than the pop-up ad. And that ad is the ad that uses sound of any kind! There is no place in Internet advertising for ads with sounds that shatter a web surfers otherwise peaceful experience with some obnoxious music or sales pitch.
I was just reminded how much I hate ads with sound when I visited the Yahoo! site to check my local TV listings. Yahoo has excellent television listings and I normally check them each night to see what’s on the tube.
This evening my otherwise pleasurable visit to the Yahoo! television listings was decidedly more unpleasant than usual due to an obnoxious Flash ad that was accompanied by sound. At the bottom of the ad were buttons that allowed one to stop, pause or play, much like the controls on a DVD player. That little effort fell far short of easing my displeasure with having sound suddenly and unexpectedly usher forth from my speakers however.
It was then I decided it had to stop. As a recent Firefox convert, I decided to go in search of an extension that would put a stop to obnoxious ads on web sites that I visit. The greatest thing about the Firefox browser it its ability to accept user-written extension which can add wonderfully useful features to the program. If you have not tried Firefox, I strongly urge you to check it out. I was a dedicated Internet Explorer snob for a long time and once I tried Firefox I was hooked.
Sure enough, there is an extension for Firefox called FlashBlock and it does pretty much what is says. When it encounters a web site that has Flash content, it replaces the actual Flash content with a little “play” button that allows you to decide whether you want the Flash displayed or not. So far, it seems to work just as intended and I shall use it from now on.
It does not block any non-Flash ads so I still see all the normal text ads and any other ads that don’t use Flash. I know there are Flash ads that do not use sound, and I did not want to block all Flash ads, but that is what I will do in order to put a stop to those who misuse Flash ads. As usual, the idiots ruin it for everyone else.
The FlashBlock extension does allow whitelisting, which means you can exclude well-behaved sites from the blocking function and still see the Flash adson those sites play automatically.
I understand the need for many web sites to generate income, and as I previously pointed out, I do it myself! I also do not assault my visitors’ senses with obnoxious advertising, especially sound! Like almost anything else, it can be done tastefully and without letting greed exercise too much influence over it.
If you are interested in the FlashBlock extension for Firefox, you can find it here.
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