Olivier Travers

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Home > Archives > 2002 > June > 13 > Why web ads with sound are a bad idea
Why web ads with sound are a bad idea

The intrusion of online ads with sound on is really starting to piss me off. I'm currently listening to some of J.S. Bach's Sacred Cantatas, and believe me Nokia's message to pitch me their latest brick disguised as a phoneDA is very unwelcome.

The PC is the multitasking, multi-windowing device by excellence. I'm not sitting back in my couch giving my undivided attention to your message, ok? I'm trying to get some work done, and the window your ad is in is just one among about a dozen. In the typical background: Winamp, an FTP and a P2P or IRC session, one or two IM programs (MSN Messenger for voice chat and stock quotes, Trillian to reach other IM networks), and Outlook for e-mail/calendaring and contacts. Then the "foreground tasks": 2 to 8 browser windows, including one to post on my blogs, and an RSS aggregator to keep track of about 200 sites. And probably one or other MS Office app, and/or Dreamweaver, and/or a text editor, depending on the tasks at hand. And that's not to count administrative tasks that sometimes require a little bit of attention (firewall, anti-virus, bookmark management, defragmentation, backups, CD burning, ...).

Nokia, who the fuck do you think you are to ruin my Bach and intrude in my work environment with your noisy ad? Go to Telemarketer Hell. I'll never buy technology from people who demonstrate they have no idea what it is used for. Kudos to Audi who default similar ads to mute.


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