Pop-up ads – you see them on a lot of websites, especially some of our major competitors sites. They can get very annoying, especially those full screen video ads and they generally degrade the user experience. Obtrusive advertising is something we try and avoid here at Techaeris because we want the content to come to you without obstacles. Now the creator of the pop-up ad model, Ethan Zuckerman, is publicly apologizing for creating the madness.
Zuckerman has this to say in an essay for The Atlantic:
All of us have screwed up situations in our lives so badly that we’ve been forced to explain our actions by reminding everyone of our good intentions. It’s obvious now that what we did was a fiasco, so let me remind you that what we wanted to do was something brave and noble.
At the time Zuckerman created the code for pop-up ads the world wide web was a different landscape, it’s noble and admirable for him to step forward and apologize. But really, if it wasn’t him it would have been someone else and who can really fault him or anyone for running with an idea that has unknown applications in future use? Thanks for the apology Ethan but thank you more for what you had to say towards the end of your essay.
But 20 years in to the ad-supported web, we can see that our current model is bad, broken, and corrosive. It’s time to start paying for privacy, to support services we love, and to abandon those that are free, but sell us—the users and our attention—as the product.
I love this idea and it’s what we have been attempting to do here at Techaeris. While we run some ads on our site they are kept to a very dull roar. You won’t find video ads or full page pop-ups getting in the way of our content. There are other major technology websites that do exactly that, they clutter your experience with stuff and of course they need to pay for the service they bring hence the clutter. Our hope is to bring you the same quality content as the big guys but without the noise. Zuckerman’s idea to “start paying for privacy, to support services we love”, is what we are all about. We are currently working on revamping our Patreon campaign so we can make our websites user supported and not corporate supported. We want to partner with our users in supporting each other. We’re not entirely positive this is going to work but we’re going to give it a run. We really love the fact we’re independently owned and we really want to keep it that way. Be sure to head over to The Atlantic and read Ethan Zuckerman’s essay, don’t be surprised if you have to close out a large full screen ad on The Atlantic though. 😉
[button link=”http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/?single_page=true” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: The Atlantic[/button][button link=”http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/15/the_inventor_of_pop_up_ads_ethan_zuckerman_wrote_the_code_at_tripod_com.html” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Via: Slate[/button]Featured image thewakeupcallradioshow.com.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
