I had the privilege of teaching a class of college students recently. The job was simple—come in one week and provide an assignment, come in a few weeks later and review the work.
I figured it was best to make the assignment pretty challenging. So I decided to ask everyone to create an interesting banner ad for a pretty tough client.
Not surprisingly, the class was a bit intimidated. Also not surprisingly, one of the first things a bunch of them said was “banner ads suck”.
A quick look around the Internet would …

In the past month I’ve worked on banner ads, websites, emails, online video tutorials, landing pages, direct mail packages, product packaging and a few TV commercials.
I’ve been pretty busy, for sure.
It makes me think back to the mid-90s when I was wondering what I should do with the rest of my life.
I remember thinking at the time that it would be fun to work in advertising. I was fortunate enough to make that dream happen.
As I look at the stack of briefs on my desk, I wonder—do I actually still …

Why is it that so many online ads still insist on being annoying, intrusive and an all-around pain in the ass?
You see them every day—the pop ups, the roll-overs and those straight-from-hell expanding ads at the top of pages. Plus, my personal favorite—the ones that have the ‘hidden’ close buttons.
I’ll be honest here, while I have a fair amount of digital experience, I do not consider myself an ‘expert’. So perhaps I’m missing something. But it really seems that online advertising—much more so than any other form—goes out of its …