Adverts are an integral part of the web, without web advertising most sites wouldn’t be able to bring us all that wonderful content for free so it is a shame that this medium of advertising has become a problem. Users now have to cope with the ever increasing on-slaught of banners, pop-ups, pop-unders impact ads and well the list goes on, surely webmasters have started to realise that their users will inevitably go else where?
Websites across the world have surrounded their content with animated advertising whether it be simple .gif files or more complex flash animations which are on-the-whole completely unnecessary; don’t get me wrong, flash ads can be intelligently created delivering a clear message in a slick manner but ultimately these type of adverts are distracting to the user, we are trying to attract new users not scare them off, aren’t we?
Companies littering sites with these adverts is not being helped by an industry that delivers facts stating that animated adverts receiving more response which naturally implies that animation brings response, however, in my experience this hasn’t been proven true, some of the most successful advertising campaigns that I have witnessed have been simple quality designs with limited or no animation.
“For some reason it seems to have escaped every body’s attention that if we annoy our users they will go somewhere else, now what use to an advertiser is a website with no users?”
All any website wants to do is increase its user base while at the same time making enough money to keep it afloat, if we keep cramming over the top advert animations into web templates eventually the users will leave which inevitably will mean the money will to.
Smashing Magazine, Web Designer Wall and even the New York Times are just a few sites that use static adverts well, while others, and we all know who they are treat their web pages like a fun fair. It’s not just the sites mentioned that are moving to a simpler way to advertise there are a number of sites coming up with more intelligent ways to incorporate adverts so that it becomes a part of the design and not an added extra.
I am guilty of getting caught up in the easy sell to customers of animation, so I am willing to do my bit to make web adverts feel less ridiculous and to show those who request overly animated designs the way forward. If you read this article, and agree with the concept that less is more then please try and do your bit, if we all do a little to help stop this over use of animation it will eventually force a good change within the industry.