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Screen grab - Web designers complain new
ad programs hijack their sites
Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, August 30, 2001
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
A Redwood City company called Gator Corp. has added more fuel to a growing Internet
firestorm about technology that plants new advertising on existing Web pages
without the site operator's consent.
Gator's new pop-up ad format, which covers a Web site's own banner
ads with a new ad linking away from the site, has spurred the creation of protest
sites such as scumware.com and poachware.com.
And Web masters are adding disclaimers warning visitors that the
appearance of unauthorized ad links are the work of third-party companies such
as San Francisco's EZula Inc.
Gator and EZula say advertisers are flocking to the new form of
"contextual advertising" because wit is an effective marketing tool
that also gives consumers more choices. But irate Web designers say the ads
are unfairly taking a bite out of their revenues and defacing their creations.
"When you spend hundreds of hours on design and testing to
make sure every dot and pixel is the most effective it can possibly be, and
someone comes along and puts 20 other links to another Web site, all that work
has been shot out of the water," said
Claire Amundsen Schaeffer, a Tampa, Fla., Web designer who has
started Scumwarelinks.com.
The new advertising technique has raised a host of issues, including
a debate over whether it infringes on intellectual property rights, copyright
laws and consumer rights. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group,
said this week it plans to ask for a federal investigation of Gator's business
practices. Meanwhile, Gator Corp. fired back Monday, filing a civil suit against
the IAB.
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the full article at SFGate.com ...
