Out of Control

Did you know that "Pizza Hut has lowered the price on everything on the menu"? No? Nor did I until I heard and saw a Pizza Hut spokesperson loudly belting this proclamation out on my computer at work while trying to catch a quick sports fix on ESPN.com. I made the mistake of clicking on a link from their homepage and on came the video ad in the corner of my screen. Hey, newsflash to ESPN and others- a giant chunk of your readers are either at work or some other place where blaring video is less than desirable. It's reminiscent of the overly aggressive folks manning the kiosks in the middle of malls across the country. All you want to do is keep the head down and make a beeline for Auntie Anne's Pretzels and the next thing you know you are brushing off some chick trying to force you to try out her special facial cleanser made with ingredients from the Dead Sea.

I certainly don't mind ads littering the sides of web pages, but you can't have the video, and especially audio, start running automatically when the unsuspecting viewer opens the page. Throw in the new phenomenon of these giant expanding banner ads and there are some otherwise solid websites that are about to lose me. It turns into a white knuckled stress-fest to see if I can shut off the Pizza Hut video without accidentally dragging my mouse over the Nissan ad on the side that turns into a full screen car, all before my boss walks by and thinks I'm watching a damn movie.

I guess we had this coming. We were offered the chance to pay for our Internet content and we balked. Paying for subscriptions was never quite palatable to most of us, and so the onslaught of banner ads started. And as I said, as long as they are restrained I am all for it. I don't even mind Yahoo! filling my entire screen with a picture of an apparently deranged girl who is so pumped about Yahoo and other social websites that she blasted her arms full of tattoos promoting them.

You might want to throw one on there for eHarmony while you're at it.

So ESPN.com, consider yourself warned. I may not be one of your "Insiders" who you have duped into paying you for "premium" content, but I still have rights.