Salon.com - Reward Good Behavior

For the last couple of weeks I've been very happy with Salon.com. Visiting their site can be something of a pain because they require you to sit through an ad before reading any content. Usually these ads are annoying, flashy and require you to puzzle out how to click through to get to the next screen and finally to get to the rest of the site. Their having ads like that makes me less willing to link to them and less likely to read them daily.

However for the last little while they've carried a very nice concept ad by Cadillac, with one slogan being “This car is faster than this ad,” showing a very brief glimpse of a car speeding through a tunnel before flashing the logo and taking you to the main Salon.com page in under 5 seconds. My appreciation that I didn't have to wait for their ad to finish has generated much more goodwill towards their company than if I considered their ad an adversary between me and the article I wanted to read.

I once had an idea for an advertisement that simply showed some nice image like a fireplace or some fish with some music in the background and at the end say “this moment of peace and quiet brought to you by [blah].” This ad hits the same target as my idea, with the bonus of not making you wait, either. (The web not being time-constrained like we've been led to believe television is.)

So I'm encouraging you all to go to Salon and read the good articles they usually have there. If they start to run a more intrusive ad, I'll complain about it and hopefully if enough people do they'll get the idea that ads that don't breed resentment are much more effective.
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