It seems I can’t read a web page now without downloading some 3mb flash or video broadway production about my bills, some pills or a newly annoying product that twitches in a desperate fight for my attention. If a Web producer or advertiser wishes to reach for the SuperAnnoying trifecta, they can add audio that congratulates me on winning their FREE*(tm) prize of the day.
Why do advertisers, and seemingly content owners & producers, feel that I must endure the download of a 3mb full motion video or Flash game to view their text? If this is to be the meaning of “multimedia” or “rich media” or whatever the buzz term is this month, then “the Web” is no longer an economical or efficient medium for (ad-supported) text distribution.
I’ve just had my streaming radio (Virgin Radio Classic Rock to the livingroom Squeezebox) interrupted yet again by a web site that decided that the 30K of text on its page was worth a monsterously sized ad download at whatever rate they felt was expeditious enough to dominate and degrade my connectivity.
I’ve had browsers lock up and be unusable until the entire 3mb of some forgettable Flash ad has been downloaded for display in one of its windows or tabs.
The asymmetric use of bandwidth for ads vs content doesn’t seem to be on a lot of people’s minds. I think the introduction of banner ads caused more of an uproar (and Wired magazine/HotWired is mostly to blame for that) — a common question was “Why are you doubling the size of my download by inserting a 10K gif at the top of your page???”.
I’ve started closing webpages whenever a 3MB ad starts selfishly messing with my whole Internet experience. Hopefully, in time, other Internet users may too. Then, and only then will the advertisers begin to think of the Internet experience rather than gaining “impressions” through monopolizing people’s Internet connectivity.
Gauging by the amount of energy required to serve a 3mb ad for 30k of content, Google text ads may be the most economical and environmentally friendly way to financially support web sites ever developed — maybe even Google’s “greenest” product innovation in comparison to the alternatives.