From the sometimes-new-technology-ain’t-that-great department comes word of a new ad-serving technology that will allow companies to push full-screen 30 frame-per-second commercials just like what’s on TV to your web browser while you’re surfing.

E-Commerce Report: Television Commercials Come to the Web ^{(free registration required)}

The new ad technology, from Unicast, an advertising company based in New York, invisibly loads the commercial while unwitting users read a Web page, then displays the ad across the entire browser area when users click to a new page. The resulting ad is identical to TV, whether the user has a high- or low-speed connection. The company says the technology evades pop-up blockers, but the person can skip the ad by clicking a box.
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Mr. Vail, of Pepsi, said he would monitor online viewers’ reactions through a tracking study conducted by the research firm Dynamic Logic, to determine how much use Pepsi will make of such ads in the future. “Yes, it’s intrusive,” he said. “But I think customers will like it, because it will be so far superior to anything they’ve seen online.”

Allow me to give Mr. Vail a clue at no charge: Internet users don’t dislike intrusive ads because the quality sucks. They dislike the intrusive ads BECAUSE THEY’RE FUCKING INTRUSIVE YOU GIBBERING IDIOT!

James Nail, an analyst with the technology consulting firm Forrester Research, agreed. “This is the best full-motion, full-video TV ad technology that I’ve seen,” he said. “I expect big demand from advertisers for this.”

Among other features, Mr. Nail says he appreciates the fact that the ads do not slow Web surfing. The commercials load into a computer’s temporary memory, and only when a page is idle. If a user clicks to a new page within the site before the ad is fully loaded, the process is merely paused until the browser is again idle. The ads run on Windows Media Player software, which an estimated 8 of 10 Internet users have on their computers.

Mr. Nail predicts that Internet users will react well to the ads, both because they can click away if they choose and because the advertisers involved have brands that “people have positive reactions to,” he said, adding, “So I think they’ll get a little more leeway, at least initially.”

Apparently, Mr. Nail here thinks that if the advertisers will love this new tech then web surfers will as well. Meanwhile, millions of PC users scramble to see what is involved in yanking Windows Media Player out of their OS by its teeth.

If users are annoyed at this development, they can blame high-speed connections. Richard V. Hopple, Unicast’s chief executive, said he decided to release the company’s “video commercial” technology now because high-speed connections - known as broadband - have reached significant numbers.

No, we can blame Unicast for coming up with yet another annoying way to diminish part of what makes surfing the net preferable to watching commercial television. I’m not paying $40+ for broadband so that I can sit through TV quality commercials I could be watching for free on my TV if I had any desire in seeing them. Thanks asshole!