Wired In
Online, interactive ad often means in your face

By John Yaukey
Gannett News Service

Remember when ads were passive?

The Web is changing all that now with interactive advertising — ads that either force you to react by opting out or entice you to get involved with a short video or a game.

"They're called interactive marketing units and they're the way Web advertising is headed, so consumers should get used to seeing them,'' said Denise Garcia, an industry analyst with the Gartner research firm.

Some are fairly intrusive.

Anyone who surfs the Web regularly has seen those annoying X10 video camera ads that pop up without warning, forcing the viewer to delete them. Indeed, some companies take this strategy a step further and deliver pop-up windows without delete buttons, making them more difficult to close, or they simply overload the viewer with multiple ads.

"This is getting out of control,'' said New York City resident Dana Lowi-Luttway. "Sometimes you get one ad thrown at you after another until you get so flustered you forget what you were trying to do in the first place.''

One site, www.passthison.com, a popular entertainment site, opens three browser windows with promotions once a visitor tries to exit.

But not everyone has taken the in-your-face approach.

The popularity of online gaming — with its 45 million players a year — has prompted some companies to tie ads to games in a marketing strategy known as "advergaming.''

Nike, Ford, Pepsi and the ESPN sports cable channel are all lining up to produce promotional games at their Web sites using gaming technology from Los Angeles-based Yaya (visit www.yaya.com for a sampling of games).

Meanwhile, other companies are running "Webisodes,'' brief online animations or videos that feature their products.

Burger King, for example, has been running a series of half-minute animations on its Web site (www.burgerking.com) featuring Phil, a young hipster who loves burgers.

"As bandwidth expands, these ads are only going to get more interactive,'' Garcia said.

And probably more annoying — at least some of them — but those can be neutralized.

Advergaming and Webisodes both require consumers to go to particular Web sites, so they're easy to avoid.

Pop-up ads can be eliminated with the right software.

• Panicware's Pop-up Stopper 2.2 (free, www.panicware.com/index. html) blocks all pop-up ads. A beep indicates the ad has been thwarted.
• WebWasher ($29, www.webwasher.com) stops pop-up ads and provides convenient filters for cookies, those mini computer files marketers use to record your surfing habits.