The Proliferation of Internet Advertising

Something that has recently been very annoying to me and that has been widely used as an advertising tactic are pop-ups. I have MSN.com set as my homepage on my laptop, and every time I go to the Web site to peruse the news, a freaking pop-up jumps out at me on the right side of the page, covering the links to the news segments that I want to read. The worst part is that there aren't any of the "X Close" boxes in the upper or lower corners of the advertisements anymore, which gave me the wonderful option of selective exposure, and I could close the darn thing right away if I didn't want to watch the advertisement.

Now I just have to sit there and wait for the advertisement to be over, and of course I don't even pay any attention to it because I'm so frustrated that the pop-up is covering the link that I want to click on.

The average person is exposed to about 1,000 advertising messages daily, and with the rise of Internet advertising, that number can be expected to grow. The nuisance factor can be expected to grow along with it as well. What ever happened to selective exposure in advertising??

Labels: pop-up