Ucomics and the art of alienating the reader.

[eponymousarchon]

Ucomics (or mycomics.com, or whatever the hell it is they are calling themselves nowadays) just reached a new high in pop-up advertising for Dilbert.com

Trying to step though their (now grossly truncated) archive always generates pop-up/pop-under advertising. Now - that's not too unreasonable, after all they're not charging me for access to the archives. 

Now, I could say that I'm already seeing their in-line advertising on every single page, or add that once I've closed a pop-under window once, that I've seen their advertising already and that I shouldn't have to expect another pop-up when clicking for the next three frames of comic - or even complain that the available archives are really paltry compared to what they used to be - but I'll let that go on the grounds that Ucomics/Mycomics have shareholders and that they, and the artist, have to make money from this somewhere or they wouldn't be providing the service. I accept that - it is, after all, the way the world works.

The problem I have is with the advertising techniques that Ucomics seems to think are acceptable.

I've just been trying to wade through the Dilbert archives, playing a fairly gentle game of 'whack-a-mole' with the pop-ups that each new day's comic produced, when I noticed that the product-of-the-day was an anti-spyware product, due to the faked WIndows XP error dialogues --convincing-looking ones to boot, -- espousing the"Your computer may be running slowly/infected by spyware/taken over by the Illuminati..." line bunkum that you see occasionally, espousing that you click here to install their product.

Now yes, at this point some of the more Internet-savvy of the people reading this would say that , this kind of thing happens regularly and that users should be a ware of it and cynical of that kind of message - but they are the Internet-savvy ones. I know of plenty of users, competent enough at what they do but who aren't that educated in the computer itself and in the deceptive marketing that is being employed here: They are often degree students here - studying Nursing and Physics and Maths, and fairly often English is a second language for them. They're also my parents-in-law, and my uncles, and lots of other people who are just trying to use their computer - and this kind of trickery is bad enough from more dubious sites that might be stumbled onto, but comics.com are a slick commercial entity - they're supposed to be the better example of this kind of thing.

Now if that were where the story ended, I might be simply peeved. But I'm afraid, gentle reader, that it isn't. I *am* IT savvy. I didn't fall for the fakery and clicked 'No'. Twice. 


And then it tried a drive-by install.


Really and honestly. I said no and then Comics.com, home of Snoopy and good 'ol Charlie Brown tried to install some crapware anyway. On my system. When permission had been actively refused. And then even tried the whole "You must click 'yes' to continue'" lie, to boot.

Even then, when I'd slapped the website's pop-ups down and denied its attempts to install crudware on my system and dragged the name of the corporate site I was using through the mud and had just about convinced me never to try and read Dilbert on here again,  I discovered one final niceness. 

Comics.com was the only web page left. The advertising nastiness spewed at me appears to have been merrily re-using my windows and everything else I was doing was gone.




I do appreciate that Comics.com probably sell their advertising space to someone else who is generating this crud without their specific, active knowledge, but this isn't the first time their output has been dubious. Pragmatically? I'll still read Foxtrot on there daily, and wade through the pop-ups to catch-up weekends because that's the only way to get to an excellent strip. But the two or three ones I'd read occasionally and then spend a while catching up on - including Dilbert? Forget it.

And finally remember through all this that this is not a "This should be free" rant . I'm someone who actually accepts the necessity and use of advertising when I'm browsing like this as a way of keeping the service available -  But this? This is abusing the relationship.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

I think perhaps the newcomer needs to spend more time looking at what they just spent £500 on, with a view to what works and what doesn't. Of course, there are those who don't, I'm just saying, if someone bought a car without learning to drive, you'd expect them to crash, and their claims that they didn't know they had to learn would be met only with snorts of derision. Same rules apply here. The only difference is the attitude that it's somehow OK, or even some sort of badge of honour, to know nothing about computers. I hereby withdraw my sympathy from these people. I realise that you are paid to deal with these people, and cannot take a similar stance :)

I cannot guess at comics.com's business model. There may be reasons why they use the advertiser they do - perhaps this one pays more, for the freedom to run roughshod over your site, and perhaps comics.com needs that level of revenue to survive.

As for locking adverts - I lock *some* adverts. I agree with the principle that advertising pays for your web experience, and hence, I will tolerate many forms of advertising. However, there are some forms that I will not tolerate, and I employ Adblock to prevent those working. I will not tolerate anything that looks like a windows dialog. I will not tolerate a pop-up or a pop-under. I will not tolerate flashing animated gifs. I will not tolerate adverts sliding themselves over the text I am reading. Any advertising company who uses these techniques, I block. I block them because they are taking unwarranted control over my PC. If someone wants to put a static advert inline in between paragraphs in a news article, that's fine with me. Google AdWords panels, likewise are fine (if usually humorously inappropriate.) It is not fine to present me with windows that I did not request, or otherwise obscure what I am reading, and I will take steps to prevent that. It may be their business model, but it is my computer.

[eponymousarchon.livejournal.com]

"I'm just saying, if someone bought a car without learning to drive, you'd expect them to crash, and their claims that they didn't know they had to learn would be met only with snorts of derision. Same rules apply here."

I think they should too - but the technology is seen as being much closer to (say) a TV than a car - and you wouldn't expect tuning the TV to a new channel to have such dire consequences - and certainly not if you were watching Paramount, say.

With regards the car analogy, car manufacturers don't pitch their sales on ease-of-use nor do makers of car alarms suggest that you just slap in in there and you'll be safe. For that matter, perhaps a closer analogy would be that when you buy a car, and learn how to drive it, you don't expect the windscreen the car maker provides to be fundamentally unsafe and in need of immediate replacement with a third-party one that doesn't *quite* fit the hole.

But I accept I'm being a bit pissy here - I guess the problem is that I don't *want* to have to screw their ad-system here. I'd prefer them not to be jerks, so that I didn't have to shaft them.


Mind you, in my darker moments I'd *love* to see the state forcing people to undergo a 'driving test' for computers before being allowed to use them, it would save *so* much of this carnage - but then I believe that "I'm sorry sir, your IQ appears to be insufficient for the use of computers - please try this typewriter instead" should be an acceptable response to some users as well.

"I realise that you are paid to deal with these people, and cannot take a similar stance :)"
(grins) What's ranted bitterly about the student in the back office stays in the back office. Or in the livejournal, whichever.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

The crux of the matter is that it may well be an appliance sold with the intent of it being like a television, but it is in fact as difficult to operate as a car, or even more so.

Both computers and the internet are still frontier technologies. The most usable, most ubiquitous OS is unsafe, and will be for the foreseeable future, unless by some miracle IE7 isn't shit. The Internet is governed by basically goodwill alone. People need telling how to survive in that environment, and right now, they often don't know how deep in shit they are, never mind how to get out of it.

[eponymousarchon.livejournal.com]

No complaints with any of that here - mind you that very fact also keeps me in work, so... ;)