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Canny Mac users will probably already have found a nifty little application which filters out banner ads.
Surfing with the app makes us somewhat nostalgic for the old days of the Web, before banner ads became ubiquitous. And, in many cases, poorly conceived, creatively-bereft and intrusive.
Now the rest of the world can join in the unfettered pleasure allowed only to one cohort, courtesy of the wonderful folks who brought us Cybersitter, the filtering software which filters out - well, tons of interesting and useful stuff as well as smut.
Solid Oak Software recently announced the release of an enhanced version of Cybersitter "in response to consumer demand", according to VP Marc Kante.
Apparently, Solid Oak developed the newest incarnation of CYBERsitter so that surfers can free up modems crippled by the heavy graphics (and subsequent L-O-N-G download times) of some banner ads.
Is this A Good Thing?
Well, it depends on your standpoint. We have no beef with banner ads per se. But we do feel that the apparent need for products such as Solid Oak's merely points up the paucity of creativity at the creative end of banners.
In another sense, the whole issue draws attention to the apparent haze of oblivion in which many site and banner designers seem to be enveloped. Whilst the creatives may have a super fast processor, a 21" monitor and a T1 connection, us lesser mortals have to make do with a 28.8, a slower processor and a 14" monitor.
Solid Oak's constituency lies amongst those of us who are tired of the World Wide Wait, and who yearn for a Kinder, Gentler Net...
The notion of an "Internet Mall" has always seemed a little perverse to us. The Web, after all, is not the "real world", so the idea that users will decide to purchase a CD (for example), whilst looking for information on vacations flies in the face of our belief that sophisticated users use the Web to obtain very specific information.
Our beliefs have been bolstered by a report by Paul Marshall.
Here are the salient points:
Businesses that have sites on malls were surveyed and asked to
rate their experiences. Five of the questions used a scale of 0
to 10. A rating from 0-3 means they are very dissatisfied, 4-7
is somewhat satisfied, and 8 and up are very satisfied.
84% of the respondents are very unsatisfied with the leads or
sales they have received from their site, and less than 2% are
very satisfied. The average rating was 1.4. More than half of
the respondents, 55%, have not received any business from their
site. Most of the 43% who have received business have received
only a few orders.
Further, 89% of the respondents said that they are not getting
the results that they expected. Again, less than 2% are
receiving the results that they expected. The average response
was 1.1 out of 10.
Another area of dissatisfaction includes mistakes made by the
mall owners that are never corrected. Here's a particularly
striking example:
One site was listed in the mall's directory as a "Clam
Substation Specialist." The business was a research company;
they were a "Claim Substantiation Specialist." This error was
never corrected and remained on the mall for at least 1 year.
Somehow, we're not surprised by these results.
"To Mall or Not to Mall"? A resounding NOT.
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