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Pesach Lattin is the CEO at Vizi Media. He is often credit as the inventor of the Advertising Pop-Up, although he doesn't often mention that in mixed company.

He has assisted many companies in strategic interactive advertising campaigns and revenue generation, from ABOUT.com to SonyStation. He is one of the creators of SPRINKS which became the Google AdSense network.

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Can great DHTML ads create false click-throughs?

Written on
April 6th 2006
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by Pesach Lattin  |
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Here’s an example of a great branding advertisement for GMC that is highly effective in branding and bringing a message. This is how DHTML/Rich Media advertising is meant to be done: integrate the advertisement into the content, draw attention to the message and the brand while getting the consumer involved. It’s almost a perfect advertisement for a brand that desperately needs more attention.

However, there is a slight problem. The advertisement moves left to right across the screen, but even when the “writing” is not over actual news content, any click-through in the general area will click-through to the landing page instead of the content on AOL.com. Users don’t mind these advertisements, but when they are attempting to get content, they do not want to accidentally click on them.

Additionally, if you accidentally click on the advertisement and then browser-back to AOL in an attempt to click through again to the content—in this occasion, the article about my senator, Hillary—you will again click-through to the landing page of the advertisement. One has to wait approximately 10 seconds to allow the advertisement to finish running (there is an X to exit) in order to click on the content, even when it seems that the advertisement has moved away from the content.

I need to be clear here: this is one of my favorite car ads I’ve seen so far in the last few weeks, and I actually went to the site to learn about the Yukon, a SUV I’ve looked at in the past. That being said, the creative community needs to address several issues regarding these types of advertisements:

1) Do they generate “false” click-throughs and thus create possible negative branding?
2) Is there a way to make sure that users do not accidentally click on the ad while trying to get to content? Can we prevent the entire area from being clickable, especially in examples like this when the advertisement is showing the actual content below it?

3) How do we make sure as a community that users do not decide that these are intrusive and start creating blocking options for them.

I’d love your feedback on this question.

(NB: After this was published, AOL actually changed the advertisement in response — and it is no longer a problem. When the writing is no longer over content,itwill click-through only to content. Kudos to AOL’steam to a fast response)



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Reader Comments.

The click through should be limited to the 300×100 ad. The floating component should only serve to get your attention.

Posted by anon | 10:56 am on April 6, 2006.

I saw a flash ad from a site last week that slightly moved the close “X” button when you moused-over, just before you clicked it so that you clicked on the ad instead. Devious.

Posted by Larry Gordon | 1:00 pm on April 6, 2006.

Heck yeah, they are trying to generate false clicks. Why the heck would they have so much transparency? Back in the day, they’d do that when someone would pay for a CPM ad to try and increase their click-through rate. On a CPC, no one should allow a campaign with any technology that serves to cause false clicks (including that nasty number that I stated in my previous comment).

It’s probably only a matter of time before publishers start creating their own flash ads that play tricks like this to create their own increased click-throughs.

Posted by Larry Gordon | 1:06 pm on April 6, 2006.

Hate to break the news, but viewers hat all ads that get in the way of the content trying to be accessed. Doesn’t matter whether it is a “floaty”, “curled page”, or a “drop down”. They are NEVER easy to close and we don’t like them. I would guess-timate that over 30% to 50% of the clicks on these “rich media” ads are mistakes.

Posted by stonegatherer | 1:50 pm on April 6, 2006.

I’m under the impression that Point Roll type of ads are not as targeted as Search Ads. Have any data on this?

Posted by Webmetricsguru | 4:46 pm on April 7, 2006.

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