Alfreido's Blog

One thing that has really annoyed me lately (among my repertoire of annoyances) is the abundance of intrusive Flash advertising found on some high-profile websites these days. I hate Flash to begin with, the proliferation of what was once a great tool that now is reduced to ugly, useless navigational bars and dressing games, sort of left a bad taste in my mouth over using Flash, so much so that I actively try and find an AJAX alternative before ever using Flash for any navigational or page animation. But these intrusive Flash ads have reached a new low…

Some Flash advertising nowadays employ a transparent background to make it seem like the advertising forms part of the site, or to create an advertisement which actually looks like it plays with the site. I’ve seen some ads where little men jump out from the supposed “Flash barrier” and breach the third wall, dancing around the site in order to grab your attention to some stupid product such as penis enlargement tablets or crappy beer. The fundamental issue I have here is that whilst this advertising technique may wow the average Internet user, web types like me notice that it defeats one of the main pillars of any website – usability.

You see, the Flash movie stretches out its invisible borders over the website in order to make it seem like it is interacting with the website. Within those borders, all normal website functionality ceases to work. You cannot click links. You cannot copy text. You cannot hover over images. Basically, its like a screenshot of the website. It looks real… but it isn’t real, kinda like the ingredients on a Domino’s Pizza.

I’m not sure if the advertising agencies actually intend for this to happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Forcing the person to have to hunt down a close button in order to stop the advertisement just gives the advertisement more impression before it is closed. It does seem like a dirty tactic to make Flash advertising more profitable… but it’s going to make users very annoyed when they actually want to use your site and you’ve stopped them from doing that just for a quick dollar. If you run a website and employ advertising like this, you may want to think about how many people you may be turning away from your site by killing your usability.