Very annoying.

I agree

I agree. In fact, this advertising tactic puts a bad taste in my mouth. I now know absolutely I'll never do business with Nationwide Bank.

I know how important advertising is to sites like this one. Sometimes, though, you've got to:

Just say "No".

I also never do business with companys that advertise like this. I just vote with my money.

Gaah, I'll see if there's anything I can do about that.

Daniel -

I wouldn't bother trying to stop the ad if I were you.

Listen guys, this is a free site. All this information is here for you, free of charge. This whole community that Daniel set up for you... free.

Internet advertising is in a slump right now. I've done a lot of research in the matter lately, and banner ads aren't paying nearly as much as they have in past years. Pop-ups are annoying as anything in the world, but for every pop-up, you may be putting 2 cents into Daniel's pocket, as opposed to 1/3 of a penny from a banner without a pop-up.

The other option... Daniel could take down the advertising, and you'd have to pay a yearly fee to post to the forum. Or you'd pay $20 to download his CCF or any other file for a remote.

Sure, pop-ups are annoying, but just close them like I do, count to 10, calm down, and be glad you just put some money into Daniel's pocket. It's the least you can do.

I don't have anything against advertising. My complaint is about a type of message that pops up everytime you enter or leave a forum, even if you've already expressed your distaste with it by closing the window before it could complete loading.

What's more, that pop up rudely kept re-sizing my maximized window. If I was viewing remotecentral full screen (and you have to at 800x600) it would shrink when the pop-up reappeared. Very tacky!

Today, however, the pop-up seems gone. Thank you, Daniel. Feel free to let national bank advertise in some other way. Their pop-up just created more anger than customer goodwill.

Dave

I get the ads on my Home PC, which uses W98SE and IE55. But my work laptop with W2K and IE6 beta does not give me the ads. Hallelujah.

BTW Tim,

I agree that we have to accept a level of advertising in return for a free site. What I just can't grasp is why these marketeers don't understand that pop-up ads mostly aggrevate people, giving them the opposite effect of the ad's intention. People don't like to get things forced down their throat, if they are interested they will click on a banner add when they are ready for it.

Sure, it is true that banner or sidebar ads hardly register on my peripheral vision anymore, whereas pop-ups are hard to escape. But I am still more likely to get interested by a non-obtrusive banner ad than those annoying pop-ups. Feed me one, and you lost my business by default.

Tim: the other thing is that the first time this happened (I did not see it pop up) Daniel did not seem to know about it. If Daniel told us that it was part of his new advertisement agreement, I am sure we would all accept it. But since threads accept HTML commands, it is even possible for someone (I guess) to do this without Daniel's knowledge.

Arjen -

Completely agreed... no one hates pop-ups more than me, but I also understand why the webmaster would put them in. Even those invisible pop-ups, which pop-up behind the current browser or outside the bounds of my monitor leave a bad taste in my mouth, but if you enjoy the service the webpage provides, you have very little options. Daniel is kind enough to remove them, although I think it's a horrible thing to do to ask him to do it for his 'customers' which aren't giving him money. Even weather.com has pop-ups, and I still go there religiously.

Anthony -

Right, I know it's possible to do it without Daniel's knowledge. Here's how the advertising on the internet works, in my experience. Someone like Daniel would sign up with a big advertising company who advertises for other, smaller companies. Daniel is given a list of all these many companies, and he can sign up for the ones he does and doesn't want to advertise for. Most of the time, it will tell you how much these advertisers pay. For example, Vizzavi (the banner ad on my screen right now) may pay 1/3 of a penny for every page view. That pop-up bank may pay $.02. I would rather sign up for the $.02 one myself. Usually the ones with higher income are also more intrusive. Them's the breaks in the internet advertising world. I think for us to ask Daniel to remove an ad which may generate him quite a bit more income is a horrible thing to do.

And those are my $.02.

You make a good point. :-)