Adlinks will ruin the web at Sparkplug 9 >> bizhack

Adlinks will ruin the web

18Apr07

If every page starts to look like this, we’re in big, big trouble.

All those links are fake links - ad links … what I’m going to call adlinks. This particular bit on nonsense is featured on /Film’s Indiana Jones story.

They don’t actually go anywhere that you might think they do, they’re only ads, and they’re either selling something at best barely related to what you’re reading about, or they’re just a way to benefit from adwords arbitrage (insert whatever pay-per-click program you wish, even Microsoft’s).

Plus, they’re too dense, meaning that the value of each individual link is less. And finally, since they bear no relationship to the story/post, they actually inhibit communication.

When you mouse over them, they look like this.

Links are the roads and the currency of the web. When they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, we’re putting potholes in our roads. We’re inflating the currency.

And we’re pissing in our own well.

Tags: adlinks, ads, links, advertising, online, john koetsier

Filed under: business2.0, marketing2.0, microsoft, mistakes, technology |

3 Responses to “Adlinks will ruin the web”

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1 Robert Dewey on Apr 18th, 2007 said:

I completely agree… AdBrite is another generator of such ads, and I can’t stand it (thus my dislike towards them and the sites that use those types of ads).

The example you show above isn’t even that bad. If you visit some popular forums, you’ll notice that every other word is a link — even words as common as “time” or “where” (which link to ads for clocks and maps, respectively).
2 Cling on Apr 18th, 2007 said:

i agree internet is already ruined thanks to aII of the Iosers who think they know what they are doing but reaIIy just wasting time creating stuff that is compIete useIess sites.
3 Tim on Apr 20th, 2007 said:

It isn’t really that bad. I hope. It’s not yet ruined, albeit the situation is deplorable but common sense eventually kicks in to people and sooner or later this matter will sort itself out. With enough people riled up, sooner or later there will be something like what cluetrain.com achieved, a common manifesto. Provide links to sites that actually contain information about the article being discussed.

That Kodak ad was hilarious by the way. Straight to the balls and no words minced Just as long it doesn’t get repetitive. Any ad gets mind-numbing after a while.