I have come to love their editorial focus on real world driving dynamics vs the typical battery of tests citing drag, panic stop and slalom numbers. It is just a great online magazine.
However, with the last issue or so I'm having a real problem reading this online rag. What follows is an open letter to the creators of Winding Road Magazine and all of you other 'eye slappers' out there in InterWeb land.
Dear Winding Road,
Please tell your advertisers that if they must animate their ads, do not create jarring sideshows and whatever you do in your little banner, don't repeat the show. Give it a rest at some point! What you are doing now amounts to eye slapping me while I'm trying to read the magazine. (And yes, I do read it for the articles.)
Maybe I'm the only one who loses attention on the story each time an ad flashes above or beside your article. Maybe I'm the only one who gets sick of seeing the same attention jarring animation 30 or 40 times during the course of reading a 100+ page issue. I may be somehow unique among all readers of this great and wonderful set of tubes called the Internets, but I don't think so.
The ads that flash and pop and burst new text and colors on to the screen are amazingly distracting and annoying. This desperate circus act for attention doesn't do ANYTHING to ingratiate me to their company, message or product. This is the web equivalent of the guy who won't stop talking in the library, the same as the guy who takes a call in the movie -- and stays in his seat. Do your advertisers want to be that guy?
Your magazine now reminds me of the quaint and comically sad days in the mid-90's when people discovered animated gifs and everyone decided to create flashing and rotating text on their site. The Purolator ad even cycles through my favorite CGA colors at the end of their ad! (To their credit however, the 'keep it pure' guys finally stop the action at some point.) Those where the days of the original eye slappers. A crude and brutish bunch.
But look how far we've come! As a result of this new "creativity" of your advertisers, here's how I have modified my use of your magazine during my reading of Issue 47:
First, I have learned that by quickly flipping back and forth from the page I want to read and the adjacent page, I can eventually get the page to load with ads that don't poke at my retinas. I'm not sure how they will stat all of the additional impressions, but rest assured none of my quick clicks between pages should be considered as a positive 'impression' for the advertisers.
Second, and this is even more troubling, I realized that I now hesitate to move between pages of your magazine because I don't want to get 'eye slapped' once again by one of these annoying ads. I was reading page 32 on the new BMW 5 Series GT and it mentioned something about the rear seats. I knew there was a picture of the seats on a previous page but I didn't leave the page I was on because,
a) I wasn't being eye slapped on the current page (ads weren't annoying on the page I was reading),
and, b) I knew I would have to refresh the page several times to get likable ads on the new page I wanted to read.
Wow. Who wants to read an online magazine that is created in a way that you're afraid to turn the page? I wouldn't turn the page for fear of being eye slapped once more.
The makers of Winding Road have a great concept. A great focus. Wonderful writing and visual presentation within the magazine pages. But PLEASE stop insulting us with the cartoonish ads. What's your next plan? Will you send in the clowns? With apologies to Mr. Sondheim - don't bother, they're here. The clowns are here and they are eye slapping us repeatedly!
Winding Road, I love your work. But please, no more eye slapping! Eye slapping will not be tolerated. I will modify my behavior to avoid the dreaded eye slap. How would you like to be eye slapped repeatedly? Fix the ads!
