MSN 8.0 Ads Everywhere

That "Butterfly" is getting old, already.

[MarkHutch]

When the news said MSN was going to spend millions to promote their new 8.0 software, they were not kidding. It seems like every major website that I visited today had some kind of pop up advertisement for MSN 8.0. These advertisments on abcnews.com & ask.com make it almost impossible to navigate their site without clicking on the advertisment. There is a small X to close the presentation, but this type of advertisment gets really old. Even after closing this ad on ask.com, the search box is not visible on my IE 6.0 browser. I just visited weather.com and a little butterfly moves around with the mouse on their site.

I assume these sites are paid a great deal of money to run these type of advertisements. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today, but I may just remove these major sites from my bookmarks if they continue to destroy their navigation with these type of advertisments.

[Slade]

A coworker just said something this afternoon about the butterfly ad. I haven't seen it yet, I guess it's only a matter of time...

[mivox]

Have either of you tried the Opera browser? With ads like that, at least with Opera on Macintosh, it's the functional equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

The only really obnoxious ads I've seen in a long time are seizure-inducing strobe-flashing banners, and the regular old popups/popunders.

[MarkHutch]

Yes, I've tried it before but still prefer IE. I know there are a bunch of Opera fans here in the forum, so I hope that doesn't hurt anyones feelings. I know MS has it's problems, but I like it and have used it for about five years.

These new MSN ads are very intrusive and may or may not be visible on Opera. Visit ask.com and you'll know right away if Opera will block this type of ad.

[mivox]

Yup... ask.com and abcnews are both free of obnoxious things flying about. Of course, abcnews still has butterfly man ads on it, but they're just sitting there like well-behaved ads ought to.

[veritysystems]

butterfly man ads?

[jen24815]

Am I the only one who thinks the butterfly man is just plain creepy? Who thought up that thing? Looks like a horror movie ad....ok, well, maybe not THAT bad. :)

[Josk]

Haven't seen a pop-up ad for ages. They still being used? Perhaps time to hit that switch in Mozilla just so I can be in the real world.

Then again, perhaps not.

[sagerock]

Annoyingness aside (however, it was very annoying). After seeing, and hearing, that ad all day in the office I then caught a commercial of him on TV last night. It was an interestingly powerful use of cross marketing between different media.

[4eyes]

I took the tour.

I laughed out loud.

Smoke and Mirrors

$10/month just use their nasty software - bleagh!

[Gizmare]

I read an article on CNET this morning that MS posted butterfly decals all over NYC, and now has to clean them up. Good for them, I think that there should be harsher penalties for companies that do campaigns like this, is this not a form of littering?

[MarkHutch]

Most people like the "butterfly". However, if they keep this up, people may be stepping on them in the future. <S>

[cminblues]

[-> abcnews.com]
Hahaha the butterfly man.. look at the gloves..
seems really a 50's SF B-movie poster.
"The Incredible Monstrous Butterfly-Man from Deep Space"

LOL :) :) :)

cminblues

[edited by: cminblues at 5:09 pm (utc) on Oct. 25, 2002]

[skibum]

here's the Cnet article [news.com.com]

They should have Gates and Ballmer down there in the streets removing them by hand.

[crash]

The "butterfly" man looks an awful lot like 'The Tick's side kick Arthur..

This is the best pic w/ wings I could find..
newenglandcomics.com/shop/images/n2af-arthur.jpg

[jen24815]

People may like the *butterfly* - I like the butterfly - but butterfly man...I don't think so. :)

I agree with the B Movie analogy. The gloves do really complete the look, don't they?

It's like they made a poor attempt to make him look menacing or something.

Oh well, failed attempt at who-knows-what or successful attempt at who-knows-what, they've at least got people talking.

[jen24815]

Hey, maybe he's supposed to look like he's ready to kick "Running Man"'s you-know-what?

[internetnews.com...]

:)

[ChimmyChunga]

Reminds me of the Mexican bee from the simpsons... :P

[keyplyr]

Hmmm - I just went to ask.com and abcnews.com using IE6 and didn't see any of these butterfly ads, except for a static banner on the right-hand side at abcnews.

If these are a flash presentation, I wouldn't see them because I have "deny" checked in the Macromedia settings. Easy to do, no Opera necessary.

[MarkHutch]

It is a flash presentation.

[jen24815]

The butterfly guy is on the right side (top) of abcnews.com and a small button on msn.com - left side.

[MarkHutch]

It's spreading. Just got a FULL PAGE flash presentation when visiting washingtonpost.com. I'm now using some software I found called Adware and it's working great. You just have to right click add it to blocked list and you see it no more. This software seems to work better than I have via Zone Alarm Firewall.

[mundonet]

A menacing man disguised as a butterfly... suits perfectly well what M$N really is IMO.

[pat_s]

I just saw it yesterday...kind of behind things. Someone at work mentioned The Tick, too. Just wanted to say that if you like IE there are still many browsers based on it that can block pop-ups, although Mozilla does it better, IMHO. My new favorite is Avanti, because you can easily click a button right on the toolbar to allow them if you want.