Broken banner ad in Digg
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Once a quarter or so, I feel compelled to click on a banner ad. Something funny or stupid usually happens when I do.
There was an ad on Digg (for me) a minute ago that said something like "A can of coke can interfere with your Wifi network. ... Click here." Now, that sounded amusing, so I thought I'd humor it and see what kind of snake oil they would be spouting.
I'm using Opera (in Windows) with GIF animation and plugins disabled, plus "Fit to Width" enabled. (This is the only way I can view ad-supported sites without explicitly banning ads, and still keep my sanity.) A funny thing happened: the ad was not a clickable hotspot (no 'hand cursor') and when I clicked on it, nothing happened. I don't know if this is because of my particular browsing setup, or if the ad server just completely barfed on this one, but I thought it was pretty funny.
Sorry, no screenshot.
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Update: I tried loading a few more static image ads (between unloaded plugin ads and text ads) and it came back to me. Still doesn't work, even if I turn off "Fit to Width".
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Perhaps this is a new marketing pattern, shall we call it the Anti-Ad?
Either that or the coke delivery guy showed up to deliver cokes to thier IT department and they stacked them in the network room.
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The ad looks like it says something like "Myth #3: A can of Coke can blah blah blah." So, it's not saying that Coke can do that, just that it's a common(?) misconception? It's hard to read at that size.
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[quote user="Saladin"]
The ad looks like it says something like "Myth #3: A can of Coke can blah blah blah." So, it's not saying that Coke can do that, just that it's a common(?) misconception? It's hard to read at that size.
[/quote]
Full-res version: http://www.glump.net/attachments/thedailywtf/bad-digg.png
Sorry, I resized it to be more friendly to the forum layout here. The full res version isn't much clearer, but I'm guessing you're right, "Myth #3:..."
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It's funny you should mention that. The other day on Slashdot I saw a Flash ad for something that said "Click here to find out more". The ad was not clickable. A non-clickable Flash ad? Now there's a WTF for you.
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We've already /done/ this joke.
Seriously, you're the guy from "The Great Google Banner Ad Conspiracy", aren't you?
[quote user="Brendan Kidwell"]Update: I tried loading a few more static image ads (between unloaded plugin ads and text ads) and it came back to me. Still doesn't work, even if I turn off "Fit to Width".
[/quote]What, you mean the "Fit to width" setting *really* doesn't control javascript behaviour? I'm amazed!
Perhaps you should have tried switching off the popup-blocker instead.
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Flash banners require a small amount of code in them, to handle the flashVar passed to it by the banner admin system. You would be surprised how many inept flash people are out there (on second thought, you probably wouldn't), who forget this small bit of code, and thus rendering the banner completely useless.
A few months ago, I recieved a banner set from a fairly large manufacturer of electronics (lets call them Phony), which were non clickable.
They had to send out new banners... worldwide...
Embarrassing? nooooooo....
