Auto-Play = Auto-Ban

I have an acquaintance who is a very funny and talented film reviewer and columnist writing for a variety of different papers and websites, and who appears regularly on radio shows and podcasts to talk about film. I’ve been following him since I was in college, and enjoy his writing immensely. Today, he posted another column in his “Eric’s Bad Movies” series, where he purposely watches horrid movies and then reviews them in a funny, informal fashion. They’re great columns and remind me of the bad movie nights I used to have with my friends in high school.

Film.com however, the site that he writes for, has decided that they don’t care at all about the visitors that come to their site and have started putting video ads all over the side bars of the pages. These ads launch automatically on page load, and begin playing–with full audio. Usually, these ads are hidden 2/3rds of the way down the page, are impossible to find, and sometimes, they can’t even be turned off.

I find this completely unacceptable.

We live in a world where we are constantly assaulted by advertising.  It’s in our television programs, along our highways, in our reading material, on our websites, in our email inboxes, in our regular mail boxes, on the radio, in our workplaces, in every store, and even stitched into our clothing.  One of the richest and most powerful companies in the world has exploded onto the scene based entirely upon the strength of its advertising platform.  (That company would be Google for those keeping track.)  Advertisements are everywhere.  I get that.  But advertising has gotten out of control.  Companies have taken the ad from the level of nuisance to an entirely new level of intrusion and I, for one, am fed up. 

Take, for instance, commercials at the movie theater.  I pay $12 to buy a movie ticket to a film that, statistically speaking, is probably going to be mediocre–if not downright awful.  I spend $7 for a tub of popcorn which I could make at home for about $0.50.  I buy a small soda which costs me $5 and which probably only cost the theatre about $0.15.  And despite the fact that I’ve just spent $24 for a single person to see a first-run movie, I still have to watch advertisements.  In the best-case scenario, the theater just displays Coca-cola sponsored slides full of trivia so, well, trivial that a mentally challenged sea slug could figure them out.  In many theaters, the theater will display triviads for 20 minutes and will then dim the lights and play 20 minutes of commercials.  THEN they’ll get to the trailers.  By the time the movie has started, it’s often 30-40 minutes past the start time of the film as advertised by the theater.  In my world, time is a very valuable commodity, and I should be reimbursed for my time forced to watch these ads, not charged for it.

Or, for another example, look at the recent DVDs and Blu-Rays that have come out in the last year or so:  I recently spent $30 for a Blu-Ray disc, and not only did it contain 8 movie trailers, a commercial for the studio, and an MPAA Piracy commercial, but there is no way to skip these commercials in order to get to the main menu of the disc.  I had to sit through 15 minutes of trailers and advertisements on a disc I purchased.  It’s no wonder why people pirate movies. 

The recent influx of auto-play advertisement on websites, however, has really raised the bar on intrusiveness.  Websites and their advertisers have made the assumption (or more likely the decision) that any activity engaged in by the person browsing the internet is less important than the advertisement.  Such hubris is disrespectful and shows a patent disregard for  a company’s customers and website visitors.

When I browse the web, it is rarely done in silence.  I’m often watching television, listening to music, playing a podcast, or enjoying an audiobook.  I multi-task.  I may be streaming a YouTube video on one screen while typing a document on another.  Occasionally, I will be browsing a website in silence at work.  Then, regardless of what I’m doing, I will click onto a website and be assaulted with an auto-play video ad.  These ads are usually mastered at an extremely loud volume, and come blaring out of the speakers with no warning.  Often, these ads are hidden half-way down the page and can’t be easily found.  Some of these video ads don’t even allow you to turn them off.

Recently, I was working on an audiobook on my recording studio PC.  I was in the process of bouncing a track down (playing it back in real time and recording it into a single file.)  The track was about an hour long, and I was about 2/3rd of the way through, when I realized I may have made a mistake on the pronunciation of a word.  I popped open my browser, typed in the word, and went to a dictionary site that had an IPA pronunciation.  This page had an auto-play advert that took over the computer’s sound system without permission, crashed my recording software, and managed to cost me an hour and twenty minutes of time.

Massively intrusive advertising is not new.  In the ‘net age, it started with the pop-up ads, which I block because of their annoyance factor and the possibility of malware infection.  Then websites started using ads that are overlaid on the page and on which you have to click in order see the website beneath.  There was a shortly-lived time when auto-play audio ads were tried.  But the massive influx of auto-start video ads is getting unconscionable.

I understand that most websites make money through advertising.  I get that, and I don’t begrudge them the fact.  That’s why I don’t use ad-blocker software (other than pop-ups) and why, whenever possible, I click on the ads that interest me on sites that I like.  It’s my little way of showing support to the people who make the websites that I use.  They give me the choice to decide what’s important to me and what isn’t, and they don’t force me to click on the ads. 

But I’m not interested in a video ad for a gay dating site to auto-play when I’m sitting in a meeting at work and looking something up to add into the discussion.  I don’t want an auto-play ad to interrupt my music listening or audiobooks.  I don’t want my eardrums and my expensive recording studio speakers blown out because an ad that was mastered so loudly that even Metallica would turn down the volume decides to start playing while I’m looking up the pronunciation of a French word or trying to read a column written by a friend. 

If you have to put video ads on your page, fine.  Turn the volume OFF by default.  Or let me decide if I want to play the video at all.  Don’t assume that I want nothing more than to listen to some breathy-voiced woman talking about online dating sites, or listening to a bunch of menopausal women talking about feminine products.  Don’t force me to search all over  a page to find a miniscule button to turn off an ad for some scam program to buy gold through the mail.

The assumption that my aural attention isn’t already directed elsewhere and that, even more seriously, your inconsiderate ad could disrupt important meetings or damage expensive and delicate audio equipment, is unforgiveable.  And the instant you install an auto-play video ad on your website is the instant that I will no longer visit that website. 

So, to the five readers of this blog: If you come across a website with auto-play ads, please list them in the comments below.  Maybe if we call them out, these sites will stop assaulting us with inappropriate, intrusive, and insulting advertisements.

I’ll start off the list: http:\\www.film.com – you just got the ban hammer.