THAT isn't distracting? Sergey, we need to talk......

actually these ads. indirectly strain the eye.. I dont why we have popups and animations so much on the web --some darn clever JS programmer did it as a hack and now its become so so bad!!

Let`s wait and see.... in my opinion those ads will move to videos Tagged...

it will be video tagged when u do your search ,,, if it is on pc or mobile phones

and as considering going mobile, the use of a tagged giant contextual mixing video tagged ads...will be the plus....

and then you will say, elias kai has posted it here as of 2.24 a:m , february 23, 2006

This is one of those times you wished online petitions actually worked. I can't believe this move, but Google continues to show that they are just a company interested in money. Heavy sigh...

This was part of the deal they made with AOL. If you don't want it, why not just get text ads?

Disable animated GIFs

Firefox:
go to about:config
set image.animation_mode to none

Opera
press F12
unselect Enable GIF animation

IE
go to Internet Options < Advanced < Multimedia
unselect Play animations in web pages

"distracting ads"!?! – Hold on a second...

Last time I checked, advertisements (banners, flash, animated, whatever...) is a form of marketing and/or getting some info out to the masses... this results in marketing a product or services... which from what I know *, advertisements (ads) are suppose to be attractive, appealing, and Distractive to get consumers full attention!

Someone, if any correct me if i'm "completely" wrong here...

* I'm no wiz but I did take some marketing classes before (in high school).

Well Josue,

From the publishers perspective it isn't just about grabbing the viewers attention. Most of us want our readers to also read our webcontent, and have (if we have to have them) tasteful ads. Personally I choose text-ads like Caleb suggested, but google could easily let us choose

a) only text ads
b) only image ads
c) only animated ads

or any combination of the above the publisher feels apropriate for their website. It is finally not a website owned by te advertiser (even if they do finance it), but a website owned by the publisher.
I've recently turned down an advertisement deal because the ads weren't allowed to be labelled ads in that deal – this is also an example where the advertiser needs to take into account the perspective of the publisher, not just the advertiser.

In relation to this I remember I saw graphicle ads at 21 Dec 2005 at Friendster.
http://my.opera.com/Thomas0/blog/show.dml/92140
and as I see there were right a day before at 20 Dec 2005 at Google Blogscoped a post about this:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-12-20.html#n47
Does this have a relation to "animated" graphical ads? In the GB post I see also a hint on AOL.

best greetings, Thomas

> If you don't want it, why not just get text ads?

I wanted to give image ads a try as I actually like those. They often look interesting to me. Also, I find the usual AdSense font just too tiny to be bearable. And I see those text AdSense on so many spammy pages, maybe I am getting tired of them.

As for "isn't it an ads job to distract?", I'd say: no. An ads job is to be noticed when the user is willing to notice it, for example, in a split second that he finishes reading an article and decides where to go; or in that split second she allows her eyes to wander around the screen. I often check out non-animated ads, and on the other hand, I often find certain animations distracting. So on this blog I want to strike a balance for ads between unobtrusiveness and getting noticed. In the end I think a blog that has distracting ads is a blog where you leave quicker, and that doesn't help the advertiser either.

Yes, Philipp, but if you put those animated on the bottom of the page, the visitor will read / scan your page and when he finishes doing that, he sees the ads. Most of the times, by the time he sees the ads, they aren't even moving (animation stops after 30 seconds), so I really don't see the problem. Really.

yeah cia has a point..but then the click rate may drop , b'coz its right at the bottom of the page