With so many shopping places to chose from, no wonder more and more companies are getting aggressive in placing their ads in different places. Because these ads are everywhere, people have started to avoid them. The companies have in turn become even more aggressive in their advertising techniques, which results in people who hate ads to run farther away. What the ad companies need to realize is that showing ads everywhere does not work, even if those ads are creative. Why? Because most ads are intrusive and waste people’s time. Non-intrusive ads are better at marketing a product or a service.

An example of an intrusive ad

I run into intrusive ads all the time. A good example of an intrusive ad is on Yahoo Games, where I sometimes play some games with Valerie. Whenever I go into any game room, I am taken to a full-page advertisement where I have to click a “Continue” link to proceed to the actual game page. That is an intrusive form of advertising, disrupting my normal browsing experience where I am forced to see an ad before I am allowed to play any game. Following is an example of what users usually see before they can get to any Yahoo game:

An intrusive ad takes time away from me without my consent, even when I am agreeing to play a free game. An intrusive ad also makes me go through extra steps before I am able to get to the things I want. Therefore, an intrusive ad is not good in my opinion.

An example of non-intrusive ads combined with an intrusive ads

Magazines sometimes contain more ads than actual content written by the magazine writers. However, people usually expect ads in the last few pages of a magazine, as those ads are usually classified ads. Classified ads are usually not intrusive like the full page ads that you run into while in the middle of reading interesting magazine articles. A full page ad in a magazine is an ad that you see while reading a magazine; such an ad can waste your time. By comparison, a non-intrusive ad at both an expected and an unexpected place usually does not waste any time for the observer, nor does it promote strong feelings of uneasiness.

For example, imagine you are reading an article on page 22 in a magazine and run into full-page ads on page 23 and 24. You have no choice but to keep flipping pages to get to page 25 to continue reading the article you were reading on page 22. The ads on page 23 and 24 are intrusive ads. Placing full page ads in between articles may get people to look at those ads, but they also ruin the reading experience because of causing unwanted interruptions. Placing ads at the end of the magazine where there is no content but only ads saves the readers time, as the readers will know where to find ads and where to find articles. Even placing small ads on pages with actual content is better than a full-page ad that disrupts the flow of an article.

However, placing a lot of small ads on actual content pages can have the same effect as a full-page ad, as having too many small non-intrusive ads promotes distraction. On the other hand, having full-page ads on the inside covers of a magazine works very well, as a user is usually not expecting content on the inside covers.

Examples of a non-intrusive ads

In the offline world, you see ads in buses, on car bumpers and even in many places and on many products in your own home. Even when you buy clothes, you are basically buying a piece of garment that comes with a brand name tag attached with it that reminds you repeatedly about the company that sold you that shirt. I have even seen ads in some public restrooms in spaces sold to advertisers by the property owners.

I saw an example of a non-intrusive ad while at the Bay Street Emeryville Shopping Center in the Bay Area last night. At the shopping center, you enter a parking structure to park your car and get a parking permission ticket that you have to pay for and then return to the staff before you leave the parking structure. To see the example of a non-intrusive ad, please take a look at the following snapshot of the parking permission ticket I got last night and think of anything strange or interesting you notice in it:

Did you notice anything interesting in the above snapshot, other than the fact that I paid for the ticket at exactly midnight, and that I got to keep the ticket even though I said earlier that people leaving the parking structure need to return such tickets? The important thing I noticed among other distracting things is the name of the parking structure gate from which I entered: “Ikea Entry 1.”

Interestingly enough, there is an Ikea store right next to the parking structure. Whether intentional or non-intentional, naming a parking structure entrance “Ikea Entry 1” is non-intrusive advertising. That name fulfills the need to have a name for the entrance, while acting as a non-intrusive ad for Ikea too. That small line of text does not waste my time, and I do not pay anything more than what I owe for parking.

How some forms of non-intrusive ads can upset people

Of course, abusing non-intrusive advertising can look weird to customers also. Take the Angels of Anaheim baseball team as an example, located in Anaheim, Orange County, California. In 2005, the Los Angeles county, located right next to Orange County, managed to get the team name changed to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in order to market to people who knew Los Angeles more than Anaheim. This resulted in many people criticizing the new long name. The city of Anaheim sued the team because of a contract in which the team had agreed to market only Anaheim through their official team name.

Such a name change is an intrusive ad by Los Angeles, even though the original name acted as a non-intrusive ad by Anaheim. Why? Because the brand name people were looking for previously now had an element which stood against the very reason those people trusted the brand name in the first place: the name of the city which was in their own county of residence.

Non-intrusive ads can create more trust compared to intrusive ads

While advertising is getting more creative, it is also somehow getting more intrusive. Displaying creative advertising that is not intrusive in people’s lives helps build an innocent and reputable brand in the long run. Advertisements are going to be around for a while, so why not make them simple, easy and non-intrusive for the customer? If you do not push your product in ways that disrupts the lives or habits of customers, you are respecting your customer.

Put your ads in places where the only reaction a customer may have is “Hmmm, that is cool“, instead of a reaction that shows frustration of any sort. Treat your customers as human beings, the same way you are supposed to treat your blog readers. Respect others and find out what is important to them and what kind of actions could help and hurt them. People will respect you for that by listening to what you have to say.