If you are like me you hate video ads on webpages. There are a few times that I don’t mind seeing them though. For example, I was reading Forbes.com today and right on their front page I was hit with a streaming commercial in their in-page video network window. This went immediately into a “top of the hour” type news short with tidbits of the latest news items, much like a TV network would do. I do not mind video ads at all when they are in front of an interesting news piece that catches my attention. These are nothing more than commercials anyway. The main types of video ads that I don’t like are the ones that play randomly when you are clicking between pages. They are often called “intersital” ads and they usually take up the entire page, giving you only a small option to “click to skip”.

What about audio ads? Audio ads can even be found in what looks like a normal banner ad. Flash banner ads often times play music or speech to try and catch the viewers attention. Those ads catch my attention right away but I doubt they work on me. I close them as fast as I can. I hate having my surfing experience interrupted by obnoxious ringtone or dating ads. Anything with sound is really annoying. Actual commercials, as mentioned earlier do not bug me as much because I am used to those already. I just wouldn’t like to go to a forum and have a commercial playing at the top at all times. There is a time and place for those and it’s before something I want to see. When it comes to audio ads they are generally interrupting something I am already looking at, which is why they rank much higher on my annoyance scale.

One of the worst type of ads that I personally will never use on any of my websites is the kind that you see on arcade and teen sites all the time. MySpace, YouTube, and all of the other sites aimed at teens currently have been following a trend of “Click the XBOX and Win!” or “You are the 1,345,293th visitor! Click here to claim your prize!” type of ads. These are generally flashing and just about screaming visually for you to click them. Ranking just below these types of ads would be the ones that say “Your PC may be infected! Click here to run a scan!” I am so sick of all of these ads. Apparently they must bring HUGE clickthrough rates because I am seeing them more and more lately. I guess most consumers and average internet users don’t mine them because if people didn’t keep clicking them I don’t think we would still be seeing them around. I guess we can’t have our cake and eat it too when it comes to internet advertising. It’s always going to be here in some shape or form. I just hope the future of internet advertising lies in the recent trends of relevant and blended ads such as Google AdSense and AdWords.