I’m not against advertisements. They’re a great way to let us, the money-soaked public, know of new titles that we can look forward to soon. If the advertisement is witty / amusing / insightful in some way, then all the better.

What I’m against, however, are those background-cum-sidebar ads you see on various gaming sites. Am I the only one who finds them incredibly intrusive? I understand that these kinds of sites live off adsales - it’s their lifeblood. But I believe they’re less effective than marketers make them out to be.

Let’s take IGN as an example - this month, they have an advertisement for Assassin’s Creed 2. Fantastic; I’m looking forward to it very much. I wouldn’t have known it was Assassin’s Creed 2 if it weren’t for the other 2 flash banners ticking away on-screen, because the images consist of some blurry photo of a guy being strangled from behind, and a generic gloved hand with a patterned blade underneath. I could convey the same meaning by smearing Vasoline on a camera lens and going to a local goth pub. As for Gamespot, it feels like that there is more ad than content, thanks to the awkward “navigation bar” at the top of the screen and the giant image of Altair pushing the content about a third of the way down towards the fold.

I don’t like the fact that background ads are becoming more popular because they’re intrusive enough as is. I’m just dreading the day when we’ll all be wearing Internet implants and we’ll be getting these ads burned into our brain stems.