Accuweather: Ads or no Ads?
December 29th, 2006
Are you annoyed by online ads?
That’s the question asked by, of all things, an advertisement on AccuWeather.com’s web site promoting ad-free usage of the site.
Of course, this ad for no advertising is wedged between a huge ad for Verizon’s new high-speed fiber service and a handful of Google ads. It seems AccuWeather is happy to collect advertising dollars while they suggest you might not want to see those ads. I wonder how Verizon and the Google advertisers feel that AccuWeather is insinuating they are annoying?
But it gets better…
When you investigate what it takes to get ads out of your weather-viewing experience, you are promised “Same Great Site Design,” “Same Great Content,” and “No Advertising” for only pennies per day.
Except…
“No Advertising” has a little asterisk next to it. What does that mean, you ask? Well, apparently it’s not exactly zero advertising. Instead, according to the site:
* All ads from external advertisers are removed. AccuWeather reserves the right to promote Premium benefits within the Premium site, or upgrades to your Premium service, or other related AccuWeather services, in empty spaces where existing ads are present on the free AccuWeather.com.
So, you’ll pay pennies a day and still see ads. Just not Verizon and Google’s ads. Only AccuWeather’s. I guess that’s what the user wants, right?
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January 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I thought this was interesting- our MN Fox station has a “close ad” button to hide the adverts there.
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/
But it doesn’t remember an settings at all, even between “tabs” that they use. So the net effect is that if the feature is used every time you load a page, you’re probably going to notice the adverts more than before since you have to dedicate some spare mental cycles to take action to close it.
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
..maybe it’s just to let the user have the *impression* that they are doing us a service, but really make it so much of a pain as to keep us from actually following through
Sounds like rebates
January 3rd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I have trouble thinking why anyone would want to pay to get rid of ads. You’re already paying for the access and now to pay to get rid of ads?
How are people suppose to make any money?
It’s not a usability issue, it’s a fundamental issue of “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it” – or in this case, ignore it or go to another website without ads.
January 3rd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
BTW, human ignorance is free.