Ever annoyed by the irksome advertisement covering the entire page whenever you go to the Times of India website?

Wrong question to many because of the content or rather the lack of content in TOI these days. But for people, who still wish to enter TOI, annoying ads asking: “click if you want to move directly” in case you wish to skip, are common. There wouldn’t be any respite to the patient visitors who cross this first test of fortitude. Neither to the pity souls, who chose to move on to the site skipping these floating ads by clicking on the move-directly link, nor to the lazy ones who let the ad disappear by itself. Because just when you think you have emerged victorious in this battle of patience  and are ready to click on a story which you finally deemed worthy, the entire screen moves weirdly to the left or to the right (any direction but the centre!!) and is again covered by a slide-in ad.

 Floating and slide-in ads, as they are called, are the evolved versions of the pop-up which died a quick death as soon as the Googles and  the Microsofts came up with quick-fix pop-up blockers. The pop-up blockers killed them irrespective of whether they were pop-ups or pop-unders. If you could recollect your memories, these pop-ups used to appear, whenever you clicked on any link, blocking the entire or a part of page. They proved out to be a tool made in the heavens for the marketers who could force their products on the consumers giving them fat chance to escape.

These ads though profitable to some were largely annoying to many who wanted their internet life back without anyone ‘popping up’ any surprises. The pop-unders springing up behind the page or the browser after clicking on any link were still bearable. These pop-unders would be visible only after closing the browser and hence were less maddening. But as destiny would have it for the pop-unders, they also had to vanish with the advent of the pop-up blockers. This did not deter the internet marketers who, to put it in a more dramatic way, had ‘tasted blood’!

They soon came back with a more evolved version of the pop-ups: the slide-in, fly-in and the floating ads. These ads proved difficult to block as they use DHTML which is integral to the browser functioning. This technology change gave these Internet Marketers a “Bramhaastra” so to say. Annoying as much as these ads are, they have become an important tool in internet marketing. They are impossible to overlook, and forcibly catch visitors’ attention. Moreover these ads have emerged powerfully with their brand new features. For instance, they now come with sounds, which demands you to be extra careful in case you choose to browse in the middle of a meeting or a class for that matter. You had better keep your system muted because these buggers wont/don’t spare anyone.

There would be many who frown upon this idea of forcible advertising in the form of in-your-face ads. But if you give it a proper thought, this very reasoning should then be applied to the TV commercials as well, which also forcibly occupy 20 minutes in a show of an hour(make it 40 for people who still remember those ‘Lux Friday-night movie’ days in the Doordarshan era).

Leaving aside this contentious issue of whether it is right or wrong, they are undoubtedly successful in catching user’s attention. The click through rate is as high as 3% on average which would mean that people click on 3 out of 100 impressions in case of a floating ad. In my opinion, the biggest challenge for these ads would be the shifting of internet world from laptops-desktops to more portable technologies like mobile phones, tablets etc. This shift would mean that these ads could become even more infuriating and could very well hamper the website traffic itself. But till the transformation is not complete it is safe to say: ‘Hate them and hate them, but you still can’t ignore them’.