Has Internet Advertising Become The New Spam?

Repost From 2013

I'll give you a quick answer.. HELL YEAH!

The New York Post has reported on the drama going on at the Philadelphia-Inquirer. A few days ago one of the reasons the Editor-in-Chief was fired is because "...he failed to make changes to reshape the paper for the digital era.."


Well if one of those changes was the adding of 'pre-roll' video advertisements on every article a reader clicks on, the publisher has now succeeded into become a major spammer. Here's how I define spam. It's getting hit over the head with unwanted advertisements whether it's through email or a website. Spam is spam.. period!

I can't begin to tell you how annoying it has become to have to wait for a site to load and then have to scoot around the page trying to turn off some annoying advertisement video It's also unacceptable to be hit with a splash screen that blocks what your trying to read. I recommend to never click the close button. By doing so your confirming that you seen it and the advertiser will be billed for each click and the site is then financially rewarded. I usually just leave the page and Google it to read somewhere else or rely on RSS feeds. Why should anyone encourage this kind of behavior?

YouTube started out with 15 second pre-rolls which someone could click to skip. However more and more have becoming longer the 15secs as well as not having the option to skip. On most of the news sites now the landing pages are taking longer and longer to load. This is because some of them have a dozen or two offsite links to advertisers that have to appear before the page is fully loaded before anyone can read it.

These guys want money. I get that. What I don't get is charging a rate so low that they need to load up on two dozen in your face ads before someone can access the information they actually came to read. Here's a little assignment for my readers. Either write down or study the ads. Can you honestly say that your either interested in or have ever bought one thing because of them?

Both AM and FM Radio is a shadow of it's former days. This isn't just because people can stream or mp3 them. Radio DJs were once entertaining listening to inbetween recordings. No matter how hard I try, I can't stand 5 or 10 ads every other song. Again mostly useless crap I will never buy. And yes TV's headed that way real fast too.

TV, radio and the internet has become nothing more then spam filled graffiti which has taken over the purpose to which people tune in or visit... for entertainment and/or information. No I don't want to hear a half a dozen promos for other TV shows I'll never watch. No I do not want to take a detailed look at the weather 3x's a half hour during a newscast. No I do not want boner pills. No I do not want a new car. No I don't want to hear about how I can succumb to the side affects of your toxic medications. No I'm not interested in gold, low 'T', menstrual pads or how bears wipe their *ss with toilet paper for that matter either!

Twenty minutes of each hour is wasted for ads on TV and radio. Now it seems 20% of our bandwidth is being wasted trying to read or watch a video on the internet as well.

I long for the days when junk mail was king. The post office made money. The printers made money. AND... it only took 2 minutes to toss it into the recycling bin or trash. Spam is spam. Whether it's junk mail, on our nation's airwaves or on the internet. These days I could most certainly waste far more then 2 minutes out of the day on this stuff.

There's one more thing I have in my toolbox when I'm near my computer....

I use this for all my unsolicited phone calls

I hold my phone up to the recording coming from my computer speakers.

Here's how this works...
Did you ever answer the phone and the robo call starts after 2 seconds? The reason is this. For 2 seconds the robo call computer is listening for both those tones and the announcement. If it hears those two things (tone+voice recognition announcement), it removes the number from it's recall list. When it's a live operator making the call this also helps. However using it on your voice mailbox will not work because it is not the first tone encountered. It has a tone which confirms to the operator or robo call computer they are accessing voice mail.