

Ask YC: Sign of the Times - An Advertisement Preloading a Lightbox - iamdave

Is it just me, or is it a horrible sign of the times that when reading an article, I clicked a thumbnail to a software screenshot, only to be greeted by an advevrtisement and the text "please wait while we load your picture"<p>I had to wait, to see a fullsize screenshot just so the site owner could show me a completely irrelevant advertisement.<p>Don't get me wrong, I know the power of ads and their place when it comes to supporting your blogs or whatever, but I think this is pushing it.  Advertisers still don't seem to have gotten the point of how to market their services without completely ruining user experience.<p>Thoughts?
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aristus
What, just because we have a new way to communicate, you think there will no
longer be idiots, greedy sons, and people with bad taste? :)

To scale, one usually must decouple components. To scale traditional
advertising they decouple the interests of the advertiser, publisher, creator
and audience. The most efficient (ie most profitable and easiest to create)
advertising regime is one that crams a volume of ads just below the endurance
of a large percentage of the audience.

Just below.

The _particular coefficients_ in the formula may be different now that there
are more alternatives, but the _formula itself_ has not changed. There may be
better _regimes_ but creating them takes above-average smarts and effort.

