I didn’t think anyone could come up with a new form of banner ad more annoying than pop-under ads, but I was, as usual, premature in my assumption. Today I came across my first mouse pointer banner ad. In case you’re not familiar with this latest marketing innovation allow me to describe it for you. Essentially you take a standard sized banner ad such as you might find at the top of a webpage and you come up with a little script that makes that banner ad float to the immediate right of a user’s mouse pointer so that no matter where he moves the pointer on the screen your cute little banner ad will chase it playfully like a lost puppy.
This is astoundingly annoying. Among other things, it forces you to keep your mouse pointer to the right hand side of the screen if you want an uninterrupted view of the webpage that you’re actually trying to look at. Fortunately, reloading the page seemed to get rid of it. Still, it’s something I hope enough people react poorly to that it’s a short lived gimmick. Grrrrrr....
How would one go about clicking that ad?