Audio Interference or Joana Nearly Committed Murder
Online, Rants and Raves - 13 Comments » - Posted on January, 30 at 3:06 am
We’ve all been seeing the influx of advertisement boasting the benefits of audio advertising right? I know I was tempted by the chance to earn revenue per impression rather than just per click. I don’t deny it, I was thinking of signing up and installing the audio ad on a page or two and seeing what I might earn. Until tonight that is.
I was in the library on my laptop, shamelessly taking full advantage of the fast connection to hit Entrecard in an attempt to reach my maximum of 300 card drops a day when my ears were rudely assaulted. You see, since I was in the library I had my earphones on so that I could listen to my music. Obviously I had the music turned down low enough that anyone around wouldn’t hear the music escaping my headset, and they didn’t. I hit many blogs, found a couple whose over abundant widgets and what not even froze the window for a bit too, when I stumbled upon a couple of blogs with annoying auto-loading background music. 
I immediately dropped my card and exited those tabs. Sorry, no comments from me. I clicked on a few more blogs, calmed down, and then clicked one final blog that made me see red. There I was, just stopping in to visit a fellow blogger when all of a sudden I was assaulted with an advertisement for Taco Bell upon opening the site.
The advertisement was loud and annoying! Remember, I had my music on and my headphones on. When the ad played it completely drowned out my music to where I could barely hear it, not to mention it blared in my ears (I was actually wincing at the audio attack) and the people sitting a couple of tables away heard the ad as well. I am not joking when I say that sucker came in way too loud.
It’s bad enough my music was interrupted, I mean hey, if I’m browsing while listening to my music then clearly I want to hear my music and nothing else. On top of that, it comes in at a volume level higher than the user’s own audio settings. It’s annoying, it’s disruptive, and just plain noisy. 
Believe me when I say I was seeing red. Believe me, I will not be returning to that blog after that. Talk about a traffic-killer.
Posted in Online, Rants and Raves | 13 Comments »
Joana the Goddess has 1004 comments
Julie the Demigod has 897 comments
Charity the Mage has 223 comments
Mari the Apprentice has 150 comments
Fruityoaty the Initiate has 41 comments
Yeah — I’ve hit that one, too and that ad IS LOUD! I click off the site without dropping a card as it’s just too much
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Eww. Yea, that is just an awful idea. And it sucks that you don’t even know when a site will do that to you. I wish there was a way to tell your computer volume up for my music, volume mute for all browser things.
I suppose the ad has really made you aware of Taco bell, so it’s worked in that sense, but I can really see why that would be annoying. I love Firefox, with the AdBlock Plus extension.
Audio ads are the worst. Especially when you have only the iTunes volume turned down and they’re louder than even the Windows volume…
Yeah, if you ended up getting audio ads, I wouldn’t even stop by the site to leave comments anymore; serious. I like my music way too much to allow audio ads to ruin it for me, even if I love you. Lol.
But I’m glad that Taco Bell experience made you see that audio ads are a no-no.
Maggie,
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one put off by that blog. Entrecard or not, that blog is so not worth visiting and being blasted with an ad again. x_X It might not have been so bad if I didn’t have my earphones on, but I did, and that sucker was loud and painful.
Mari,
Ooh, sounds like someone has had the misfortune of running across them on some sites.
Solomon Broad,
You could say that the ad worked by making me aware of the seller (Taco Bell). But it also didn’t work, because in the mood I was then, I would not have gone to quench my appetite.
At least not my appetite for food, lust for blood however…
Maria,
Well when I said I was considering it, I wasn’t going to put them throughout the whole site.
There are a couple of pages that my regular visitors never seem to look at (old, old posts mostly) but they get a ton of hits from search engines and bots. I thought it might be interesting to make a profit off the bots. But agh! Those things are too annoying. x_X No worries hun, no audio ads on here ever.
Julie,
Indeed! That would be such an ingenious invention, I know I would happily buy any software or extension that did that. ^_^
I had them installed but I took them off….but I had to restore my theme from a backup copy I’d made (messed the original all to crap on my hard drive somehow), and they showed up again. Had to go through and take them all off. Grrrr. So if it was mine, I apologize, I was trying to get rid of them. Hmph.
Charity,
Nope, it wasn’t your blog. In fact I don’t recall ever hearing the ads on your site. Perhaps, because I’m usually on dial-up, they loaded so slowly that by the time they would have loaded I’d already read the post in question and moved on to comment?
So how was your experience? Did you make more money that way rather than with adsense?
LOL, I didn’t make anything. In fact, as far as I know, the ads never even played and I had them on 3 different sites. At least I never heard them. So I took them off. I have enough problems getting people to visit some of my blogs. I don’t need to scare them away with Taco Bell ads. LOL