Creepy ads are bad ads

Creepy ads!! The kind that stalk you. Follow you around the web. They know where you are and what you have been doing. Exactly what you have been doing. In just the past two weeks several of my friends have mentioned having been repeatedly targeted in this way. They know I work in online advertising and so I’m often their first point of complaint. Some years back when people learned what I did for a living they would invariably say: “So you’re the one responsible for all those annoying pop ups!” Well, no as it happens. But by that time they had stopped listening.

Pop-ups have long gone from the digital display advertising scene but the same impulse that created them persists, it seems. The lesson to learn is that just because something is technically possible and even commercially tempting doesn’t mean it is acceptable to users.

But stop and think about it for a moment. Stalking users with ads for very specific products and services as they travel across the web is going to get people spooked. Spooked people will get upset. Upset people will rise up on Twitter and Facebook to denounce you and regulators will soon follow with legislation that throws babies out with the bathwater making all our lives that much more difficult.

So next time you have a great innovative techno-mercial wheeze that will make your company kazillions of dollars, please sound it out with your family or friends in the bar before getting your CEO excited about it. Thanks.