Over the years I’ve noticed various advertising trends that I call ineffective advertising. These are advertising trends that turn potential customers off, rather than turning them on to the products advertised. These are advertising techniques that businesses should really shy away from, if they really want to accomplish their true advertising goals.

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Among these ineffective advertising trends we start with television automobile ads that neglect to tell you the miles per gallon. Once they started doing that, I was left with only one possible conclusion to draw; they must be ashamed of the MPG, or they would tell us what it is. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I may not be like most people, but frankly the MPG is the single most important characteristic I look at before I would even begin to consider buying a car. Next most important is comfort, but even the most comfortable car will not meet my standards if its gas millage is too low. Now a days, with the price of gas what it is, MPG has become even more important, and with the emphasis toward being green that issue has grown increasingly. So, here is a heads up to car manufactures everywhere, if the MPG is less than 40, then it is your own fault if your cars don’t sell, period.

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Okay, now when it comes to advertising on the internet, we all know about just how annoying we find pop up ads. Regarding pop up ads, I’m like an elephant, I don’t forget, and I don’t forgive either. If you use pop up ads, then I will NEVER buy your product! Until recently this particular strategy of advertising was the most ineffective. Get a clue pop up advertisers, why do you think people have gone out of their way to produce special “pop up blockers”? Because you interrupt the flow, and that is rude, and people hate that, as well they should. And as a result, since you are so rude with your pop ups, then you actually don’t deserve for anyone to ever buy your products, at all. And that’s not an opinion, but a fact!

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But now, there is a new trend in town, and it has reached the point of being the absolute worst of the worst; yes even exceeding pop up ads in its ineffectiveness. In fact, it goes beyond ineffective, and delves into the domain of “Counter Productive”. This particular trend in internet advertising is so counter productive that it insures to both annoy and even insult the potential customers. This one is the ultimate turn off. These are “Advertising Hijackers” or “Link Hijackers”. You click on a link for a page, say to take you to an article that you think sounds interesting, or maybe if it’s an article with more than one page, when you click on the “next page” button, and what happens? Instead of getting the page you actually clicked on, the link gets hijacked by an ad and you get redirected to this advertising page, which you did not ask for. This is so heinous! If I wanted to go to this advertisement, I would have clicked on it, but I didn’t so these hijackers are doing more than just annoying me, they are infuriating me. And I am 100 % justified in my rage, and they are 0 % right to do it. This is so wrong that it makes a total boycott of products advertised in such a way, the only correct thing to do in response. I would even go so far as to say that advertising hijackers are immoral, as well as pretty darn stupid. After all, no one wants their link to be hijacked like this, so what are these advertisers thinking? It isn’t going to help them get more customers. If anything, it is practically a sure thing that this trend in advertising will only accomplish turning consumers off from the products using this hijacking method. It is absolutely nothing but ineffective and counter productive. There is no merit to it, whatsoever. So, to all you advertising link hijackers, let me tell you like it is. You are shooting yourself in the proverbial foot. This advertising technique can accomplish absolutely nothing of value, and is an absolute certain way to decrease sales. At this time, I’d say that you couldn’t possibly devise a more ineffective way to advertise than this link hijacking method. But, then I thought that about pop up ads, and yet somehow you did manage to go that extra mile down the road of advertising ineffectiveness. So, given time, you may yet exceed link hijacking and actually devise a method more ineffective and counter productive. However, my hope is that maybe, somewhere along the line someone will arise to the occasion and have enough actual business sense to do away with such awful advertising techniques, realizing the extent to which this is not working. Link hijacking will never work. It will never be accepted, and will always be counter productive. This elephant will never forget, and never forgive link hijacking for advertising. It’s just not the thing, so just don’t do it.

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