ive noticed recently that the large amount of high-definition Flash-based advertisements embedded in some web sites can cause my web browser to hang up or even crash. this seems counterproductive for the advertisers -- why do they do it? theres a related phenomenon i observed many years ago on television. when the commercials come on, everything gets louder. the commercials are actually played at a higher average decibel level than the content programming. i always figured maybe it was to make sure people pay attention or so people can hear if they walk out of the room to get a snack or something. but i often observe that it has an effect opposite of whats intended: the louder commercials are so annoying that people sometimes turn down the volume, and end up not listening at all! similarly, in the modern internet, ive observed that a lot of times the advertisements are way more data-intensive than the actual content, and these advertisements are causing my browser to slow down. the reason im writing this is because i was just trying to look at some words on merriam-webster -- a dictionary should be pretty slim data-wise, right? -- but the page kept crashing because it couldnt deal with the seven data-heavy advertisements in the margins why would they make heavy advertisements that crash peoples browsers, instead of just making less-obtrusive advertisements that people are more likely to actually see?
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 21:51:03 +0000