Deceptive advertising

It’s really quite easy for one to be fooled by banner ads that look like windows. Even though they’re just images, they blatantly use standard Windows error icons and graphics, including the minimize, maximize and close buttons, in their ad. This makes it look like they have a close button when in fact clicking it just takes you to their destination page. For example, this tricked my dad and although I’d never fallen prey I realized there’s really no clear visual way to tell if you’re looking only at the banner (not your mouse cursor or browser status bar)

4 Responses to “Deceptive advertising”

  1. Anonymous says:

    I only close IE windows by right clicking the open window in the Taskbar, and selecting “close”.

  2. LokiSnake says:

    I use MacOSX, and the “deceptive” advertising, when it shows, is just plain stupid from my point of view. Advertisers would go out of their way to cheat people into clicking their ads. I have been able to easily spot those fake notification boxes during my XP days also, yet my sister still gets cheated by those.

  3. Anonymous says:

    i think taht u should have more information about deceptive advertising b/c not a lot of people are aware of how to try and stop it do u kno how to stop it?

  4. I am doing a series on deceptive advertising in our blog http://www.creativewondersblog.blogspot.com. Are you aware of any other forms of online deceptive advertising (not really our area of expertise, but it would be good to include).

    Thanks.

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