Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

A friend shares a great article with you. Intrigued by the headline, you click, excited to read something smart, pithy, nuanced. But then something happens—you’re bombarded by ads. Perhaps it’s a small sidebar video that automatically plays with sound, maybe a blinking neon sign that floats around the browser taunting you. How rude, right? So rude, in fact, that it makes you want to close the tab before you reach the second sentence of the actual article.

For anyone who regularly reads the internet, this pattern is far too common. Users are expected to dodge ads just to get the content they want to read or watch. Publishers probably hate it, too, but they have to serve the ads. It’s supposed to be the cost of doing business.

But according to a new study published in the Journal of Marketing Research, such intrusive advertising may actually be bad for business....