Accidentally moving my mouse cursor over the bottom of the MSN Messenger Window I triggered a hidden, brain dead happy-go-lucky video ad from McDonald’s. Suddenly the loud and annoying sound of the ad was screaming out of my earphones making my ears ring.
Do not auto start sound in any way. Not in banners, on web pages or any where else. Let the user choose when to use sound or not. You do not know how the volume levels of the user’s computer has been set, and no ad – no matter how cleverly produced – will work when blown into your head at 120dB.
Also, while the customer might be able to handle ads when surfing the web, it is very intimidating to be confronted with popup video ads and sounds in what you regard as a desktop application.
If this is the new way of presenting ads in MSN Messenger (or Live! Messenger or what ever the name is this week) I’m shifting to another IM that will leave me alone.
[UPDATE: Jacob Hage has the solution! - in Danish. It's all about getting this patch]
A McDonald’s video ad just waiting, ready to jump up and scare the minced beef out me.
Whammo – I’m not loving it.
hehe – I had the same experience: Keeping my MSN window to the left of the screen space and always fully expanded the ad is located only a few px away from my favorite shortcuts in the taskbar. Naturally it caused the reaction you described above except that I was’nt wearing my headphones, so my ears were saved
BTW I noticed the ad just around lunchtime – coincidence or clever targeted advertising?
Anyway, It didn’t work – no burger for me, but I totally agree with you. Luckily the Firefox plugin AdBlock Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10) has kept me from those annoying rich “move your mouse over the banner”-ads on the web.
If just the technical solution done by MSN was a bit better, I colud maybe live with it… But on my machine the banner wont go away… If I accidentally move my mouse over the banner it has a tendency to ‘stick’ until I actually close the IM client! Very annoying.
The trick for me is to place the window so that banner is placed outside the visible area of the screen. By doing so no accidental mouseover events are triggered, and my ears are saved!
Had the same experience in my MSN. But hey, nothing is free! Not even MSN! There is always a price to be paied and in this instance when using the free MSN the price is headache due to 120dB mushing your brain. But believe me, users will keep using MSN – its free!