Mystery Guest and I cruised to Yahoo! this evening and were both suddenly taken aback by what we saw:
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Here's a detail of the center of the screen:
As you can see, they weren't hacked; it's just the start of an incredibly poorly designed overlay ad for an SUV. This isn't just poor user experience, it's dangerous branding. Granted, within 4-5 seconds, the ad changed and I realized what had happened, but those first few firing synapses didn't give me the kind of warm, cozy feeling that Yahoo!'s shooting for. I'm also of the opinion that the ad isn't particularly relevant or effective - what the heck does "They can't be overshadowed" have to do with an SUV? The end of the animation provides no clue:
Am I just not hip enough to "get it?"
All ads and no relevance makes Yahoo a dull engine....
I see the SUV ad on the Yahoo! homepage now, but I didn't see the text when I logged on. Was it a mistake? Did someone realise how awful it was and take it down?
Poorly thought out tactic is my two cents
If my parents saw that, they would start screaming at the top of their lungs "MY COMPUTER IS DYING!!!"
Oh btw, congrats on the Win over at seobook, feedthebot.
Hey there was less comments about the Ask billboards where they state: The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus
And Rand... come on ... the hip comment was purely to see how your hippness factor was.... which is still running high.... hope you have the shoes replaced!!!
Responding to DGF & Ruug, even though this blog "validates" the ad in some sense as far as building buzz:
If Lincoln were spending all kinds of $$ on the front page of Yahoo just to build buzz in the niche market of SEOs and people interested in web interfaces, I'd say that was a pretty long shot in terms of ROI...
I didn't say it was a good buzz building effort...
Lately there have been a lot of these types of ads (like the "The Algorithm Killed Jeeves" campaign as AussieWebmaster pointed out and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force (a.k.a. ied) ads and there are probably more that I'm not aware of as I live on a Caribbean island). This one looks very similar to me.
As for the $$ for the front page of Yahoo: I don't know what the ROI is for a typical ad there. But if you have an ad there, wouldn't you prefer to have one that also generates buzz?
I wasn't saying that the branding or buzz for Lincoln was neccessarily bad, but the message is HURTING Yahoo! - that's the fundamental problem, her.
I couldn't agree more (see first comment at 04:28 AM)
I also agree that Yahoo ought to have some kind of human editorial filter for ads like this -- after seeing it live, it's almost as annoying as the flashing "CLICK HERE YOU'VE WON" popups were before the days of popup blockers.
what a great idea! instant audience reaction and response to online ads recorded and provided to advertisers for utilization in stratgeic ad development! and yes it would halp to ensure that the home pages of the engines didn;t diplay kak ads for more than a few hours at most - assuming they listened to user input, and not the big bucks of the advertisers... and consiering the budgest these giuys have to play with for each ad flight - that might prove a small hurdle, unles thay cansell them on the 'feedback efficacy and percpetion' thingey you got going on here....But I agree that a big scary ad like this on the Yahoo home page is probably not doing it any favours except contributing to exit rates - which is not really a favour to anyone except the other SE's *sigh*
Very true... I think that a lot of sites seem to forget that the advertising on their site reflects on them as well... if you have an inappropriate, unrelated or just-downright-nasty-looking ad stuck on your home page, visitors will hold it against you
I saw this this morning as well and started laughing. I thought about all my friends who do media buys like this and would be horrified if a client ever approached them with this ridiculous idea. Yahoo must have either gotten their allotment of "medical" marijuana or Lincoln paid a lot out of the tail-pipe for this flash of brilliance.
It is unbelievable. I am wondering who can hack google.
A good ad is an ad that gets people talking about it.
Unless it annoys people to the extent that they all say, "gee, how awful it that? I'll never buy one of those cars."
That statement is definitely not always true.
I swear it looks more like a mistake the more I look at it... we're sure it was on purpose? I never got to see it live :)
Jane, I was on there about 20 minutes ago & it was still live...? I wonder if they are they serving it on a geographic or time-based rotation?
Yeah, it's strange. I see the Lincoln ad (just the picture of the car), but nothing out of the ordinary or annoying. I do get really sick of the Yahoo! homepage's ads. I used to use Yahoo! for my personal email and I'd always try to go straight to mail.yahoo.com rather than through their homepage. The ads are always intrusive, slow-loading and they inevitably cover the links you want to click on. I like Gmail's benign little ads far better!
hey jane, it was there, it now appears to be down, I also couldn't see it until i refreshed my screen...- well I could see the ad , but not the 'text horror shadow intro' - i had to refresh for that - or 'replay' the ad - jah right - I willingly expose myself to repeats of crappy ads.. I think its a compulsion ;-)
No, I think Lincoln tried to be too "hip" ....when was the last time you saw an american car commercial or ad that was any good?
Now I'm not an SUV person, but the new X5 commercial on Nurburgring always gets me to turn up the volume and hit rewind on the DVR a bit just to watch the entire thing in all its glory...
*hangs head in shame as the owner of not one but two SUVs*
Hey man, I got dogs to cart around and an in-laws boat to tow.
However, back on topic, this is a frickin fantastic car ad. Isn't it, Frank?
great ad.... aussie or kiwi? the cow suggests aussie... but the outhouse kiwi...
lmao
Wasn't the actor an Aussie but it was filmed in NZ? I can't remember. But it's still the greatest car commercial of all time. An ad that makes my grandmothers say, "did he say what I think he said?" has to be good.
Lincoln's ad people have a lot to learn.
Oh I came across this on a Google Blog.... aussie search for Good more than any other country
https://google-au.blogspot.com/2007/05/aussies-go-good-searches.html
All your road are belong to us
or perhaps
I'm in ur suv drivin ur doodz
Also, I think it would be fair to say that you guys are at the savvy end of web surfers in general - you worked out what was going on. A lot of people wouldn't - making it bad for Yahoo!
Great point will,
That just screams hacked - did they want to give the impression of having hacked Yahoo! they were so cool...?
Wow that just leaves a cold feeling behind. Yecch.
And hey - ugly polluting car making the Yahoo page ugly and polluted... but that is 100% personal, uninformed opinion.
Me, I'm a sports car kinda gal... ;-)
Another sports car kinda girl here too! ;)
Not just you Rand... I personally cant see the relevance there either, very odd advertising.. surprising that Yahoo went for it as it does make the page look nastily hacked.
I am a long time Yahoo mail user and hate the ads they have been showing recently. Not only are they obtrusive, they aren't ever related to a particular page or service on Yahoo.
I haven't used them for search in quite awhile except for ranking checks, but if this is the trend they are starting, it's no good.
That was... uh... weird. Now I'm stuck trying to figure out how "They won't be overshadowed" is connected to anything. XD
"they won't be overshadowed" is a statment of size, big car, big engine, big ego.....big bills, big polluter, big hassle...perfect for someone with sms......so all in context i would imagine it means nothing can over shadow this almighty vehicle.....I think it's one of the worst ads i've ever seen....and i've seen some pretty dreaful ads!
great profile tagline :)
C***... I thought it was an error, but it's not... I can only say - oh dear - I don't like it personally, I think it detracts from the brand. Buzz maybe, but is it converting buzz, or just - 'oh dear' buzz...? And they let you replay the animation - nice of them....
I totally agree - I think this is more "oh, dear" buzz - because on-face (and I'm guessing to the average ad exec as well) there's nothing incredibly edgy or controversial about it that could generate buzz - it's just a bad idea. Also, I can't remember the last time bad design was controversial. It's just bad.
I'm agreeing with you agreeing in that it is just plain bad... no controversy there :-)
The intent of the car company was most likely to create some buzz (which worked as testified to by this post).
What gets me though is that a company like Yahoo!, which always talks about usability and "the user experience" being the most important for them, has allowed this ad. Do you think they charged extra for this? I hope they did, because this will get them some baaadd press.
I agree. This blog confirms that the ad is effective in generating interest & buzz. Success.
Exactly - If the purpose of an advertisement is for people to remember it and talk about it, they've got a great success on their hands.
One of my staff pointed this ad out to me, so it's certainly getting a lot of exposure on the net! Not great for Yahoo, it does reflect poorly on them - I wonder how much of a premium Lincoln had to pay for damaging the user experience at Yahoo.com?
So is that Lincoln a contextual ad or was it just random?