The Coffee Desk

The Most Annoying Ads On The Internet

My rule of thumb is this: if you have to advertise something to the point where I can’t go on any site without seeing it, then its either a crap product trying to gain more exposure (after possibly several negative reviews) or its a sham.

And in most cases, especially after a little research on the product, I’m right.

The Teeth Whitening Thing

I see these everywhere:

I hate these teeth ads

…isn’t it hideous?

I automatically draw a negative opinion of the product, whatever it is, that’s being advertised here: the ugliness of the ad just makes my skin crawl, and on top of that, it’s everywhere I go.

A little research showed that many people including several credible sources are calling it a scam. All the more reason not to “buy into” over-advertising, and a very good reason why Anthony hasn’t put any ads on this website.

“Back To School” Ads (the ones that dance)

Yahoo! Mail has the tendency to attract horrible ads like its some kind of magnet or something. And these ads are by far the most annoying, with the dancing characters distracting me from reading my Email to no end.

I don’t have a screenshot, but I’m sure half the population has seen these annoying ads in one form or another: they’ve featured dancing skeletons, a dancing rave chick, and walking moms (“Obama Asks Moms To Go Back To School” etc.)

Another aggressive ad campaign that leads me to suspicions as to the advertised product. Even worse are the “GET YOUR DEGREE ONLINE NOW!” commercials, but the two are very on par with each other.

Evony

Nothing much to say as to how annoying these ads are. I know you’ve seen them yourself on every website, but here are a few in the Annoying Hall Of Fame:

One of many annoying Evony ads

NSFW, but shown in the sidebar anyway

The worst one

Here lieth a problem with ads: Most are displayed in the sidebar of the page, right? Well, when one is glancing at your screen (e.g. at work), the first thing they see is whatever is in the sidebar. So if one of these ads are in the sidebar, then guess what?

And as far as Evony’s ethics go, I found this out about the company: they steal images. In an excerpt from the image owner’s blog, this little tid-bit of information regarding an Evony ad was uncovered:

The Evony Ad (using the stolen pic)

The original image, which Evony stole

On top of that violation of ethics by Evony, there are multiple other critical points by other bloggers and news sites (such as the Guardian), many of which are being sued by Evony. These posts can be found here, here, and here.

So once again, the product behind the overly-aggressive and spammy ad campaign is a sham, with the Guardian claiming that they are linked to a Chinese World of Warcraft scam (goldmining). On top of that, the “queen” that half the ads coax you to come save doesn’t even exist, which they tell you after you register.

Other Miscellaneous Annoying Ads

Any ad by Network Solutions, Inc. is annoying to me. They all feature some double-meaning opening phrase and South Park-like talking heads that somehow end up talking up Network Solutions’ hosting and domain name service.

GoDaddy’s ads on their own website (as well as their attempts to get you to upgrade your package while purchasing) is equally annoying, and ironically out for the same goals as Network Solutions.

MagicJack overadvertises – just look at this:

And finally, the Snorg Tees ads are too racy to be placed into the sidebar of every web page I’ve been to. NSFW ads are just terrible, and Adblock Plus just doesn’t come on the browser we’re forced to use at our workstations at work.

On A Lighter Note…

We were joking about what an ad for The Coffee Desk would look like if we chose to follow the guidelines set by those ads above, and here’s what we came up with…

Tongue-in-cheek The Coffee Desk ad

Feel free to plaster it all over the Internet