Obstructive advertising

So, if advertisers don't like you ignoring or not clicking on their ads, what are they to do?

Make their ads take over web real estate when you roll over them! This cropped up about a week ago (well, that's when I noticed it) and its terribly annoying. I don't use the scrollbar on the side of the window - does anyone anymore? Either you are rolling a scroll wheel or doing the two finger scroll on your trackpad (for Mac users). The bottom line is that your cursor will be on the window as you are scrolling down for content and poof! You trigger the window expand almost every time.

Sure the guy (or gal) who thought of this was clever - but in the long term its bad for online marketing and seems like a desperate attempt to get more (less?) value from their online marketing.

I've not done any real research to track it all down, but weather.com and Engadget are running them right now. (see pics)


















Sure everyone needs to make money online, but being obstructive? I think it spells bad things for the websites that approve of ads such as those. After all, I'm somewhat annoyed at the advertiser, but the website had to approve it. I guess they don't really value and/or respect my my visit. (?)