The big however of ads..
I'm summarising my main ad objections here. Not that I particularly want to encourage ad people, but the reality is that some sites depend on it to survive so it's in our interest to see if we can improve things.
My list is in the context of the fact that I travel a lot, and bandwidth is thus expensive (in other words, I don't want my business expenses to fund the transmission of this crap). Also, low bandwidth means you really need those last bytes for your own use - I have had pages hang because the ads didn't come through. Thus:
- no Flash ads, nor ads that auto-reload. Takes too much bandwidth.
- no tracking. I rather see something new than see the same f*cking ad because I happen to mis-click somewhere (I'm looking at you, Zappos), and you have no business stalking me, online or otherwise.
- keep it relevant. If I am on a car site, I may be interested in car related things. Unless you consider girls accessories, of course, which is a debate I will stay well away from.
- it took us several decades to lose the <blink> tag that first made its appearance on green screen VT102s, and that was already annoying then. So what on earth makes you think heavily animated ads will be *attractive*? That's probably one of the key drivers to ad blocking in the first place.
- any ads with active content are a risk (another one against Flash), certainly those served from a 3rd party site. I realise that nukes the model of aggregators, but I am not using the Net to benefit you, nor should you have a way to make it so.
- if I *do* click an ad, please don't insult me by burying me under all sorts of other crap because you think I'm an easy mark. The only "easy" you get with me is "easy to piss off".
- stop "hay tomorrow" advertising. "Click here to find out the secret of .." means showing me "the secret of ..", not lead me on a merry road.
- last but not least, one for sites themselves: please do ..
.. not chop up the ..
.. articles into a ..
.. million small pieces so that ..
.. you can place more ads ..
.. around it. Quite simply, if you do that without a "single page" or "print" link you will have lost me as a visitor. Forever. I won't even come back when you change your approach because my absence means I won't see it. El Reg has in this context a reasonably decent page size, although images immediately bollocks this up (technical term).
So there. Did I miss anything?