Open letter to ZDNet Australia

Internet

Everyone hates splash screen advertisements that take up your entire browser window, so why do site owners still employ them?

Dear ZDNet Australia,

Because you have some of the best reporters in the Aussie IT industry, I put up with your universally derided splash screen advertisements. I suppose your market research demonstrates that people who immediately leave a site because they employ full screen advertisements before showing the pages people actually want are monetarily insignificant. Fair enough, it’s your site, do with it as you wish.

One thing I will comment on though, I’d suggest you take a look at your links to figure out why some people like me haven’t been able to get further than these splash screens over the last week; when we attempt to click the otherwise cheerful "Thanks for waiting, continue on to ZDNet Australia!" link, we’re redirected back to another splash screen instead. You can understand my frustration!

I suspect it’s due to my use of the NoScript extension for Firefox, but I can’t help but think one could create a hyperlink to an originating page without needing JavaScript in the first place. I suppose NoScript users are also statistically insignificant ;).

Most super-duperly graciously yours,
Ruben

Update

Since posting this entry, a tab I had left open at one of the ZDNet Australia splash screens finally redirected me to something else. Something tells me I'd better go somewhere else to find this information ;).

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Ruben Schade is a technical writer and infrastructure architect in Sydney, Australia who refers to himself in the third person. Hi!

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