As you might have discerned from my post yesterday on blocking Flash ads, I’m on a quest to eliminate intrusive, distracting, irrelevant advertising from my online experience.
Today, Wall St. Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff wrote on his weblog The LOOSE Wire about another Firefox-based solution to one of the most annoying types of advertising of all: those phony, automatically inserted links from Vibrant Media’s IntelliTXT.
Fortunately not too many mainstream, general-interest news sites use IntelliTXT. So far, it seems mainly to be a plague of tech news sites and blogs. In case you haven’t seen these ads, they appear to be links in the editorial content — with the minor visual distinction that they appear with double underlining. When you mouse over those “links,” a pop-up ad appears. Often that ad is only minimally relevant (if at all) and it’s always annoying.
Wagstaff explains how this approach to advertising can create a conflict of interest for news organizations. He also offers a solution that allows Firefox users to kill IntelliTXT, so those phony links never appear in your browser: First, install the Greasemonkey extension. Restart Firefox to activate that extension. Then install the IntelliTXT disabler script.
I just did that, and tested it on the popular tech review site The Gadgeteer. No more IntelliTXT! Cool! Thanks for the tip, Jeremy.
…Back in 2004, when IntelliTXT was enduring an almost universal thrashing from annoyed Web users and outraged journalists, author and noted blogger John Battelle suggested a twist that, I think, would be a better approach. He wrote:
“What if it were possible to break out keywords for a given article in a separate box, and run that box at the end or to the side of the article? This addresses the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup problem (your advertising peanut butter is in my editorial chocolate….) but retains the power and reader service of the system.”
Now, I probably wouldn’t mind something like that so much. Or smarter version of Google AdSense that the publisher could tweak to ensure relevance. I’m not anti-ad, I’m just anti-intrusion. But IntelliTXT in-line ads? I’m so glad I’ll never have to see another one.
…In other news: I’m now trying out Adblock, another popular Firefox extension suggested by Andrew Kantor. So far it seems to work well. It’s definitely more versatile and targeted than Flashblock. However, Adblock is considerably geekier to configure. So if you just want a quick, no-brainer fix to the most annoying ads, try Flashblock. If you’re willing to fiddle a bit, try Adblock.
