aNewDomain.net — Having ads in Gmail is nothing new. They’ve been around from the very beginning. This morning, however, I was quite surprised to find two new ad changes in my Gmail. The first thing that I noted was that the strip ads which were added a few months ago when Gmail added the new tabbed format now had graphics in them.
Image credit: Sandy Berger
It was when I clicked on the Promotions tab, that I was really surprised. The entire width of my screen was taken over by this large popup Gmail ad.
Image credit: Sandy Berger
The text in the ad reads: “What’s this? It’s a new type of ad which you can forward to a friend or star to save in your inbox. If you dismiss this ad, you won’t see it again.” Above the ad was an obvious place where you could dismiss it. That’s nice, but I absolutely hated that my email browsing was being interrupted by an ad. And I don’t think that I ever in my life wanted to email an ad to a friend. I don’t think I would keep very many friends if I junked up their email boxes with ads.
Today I only received one ad like this in my Promotions tab. Perhaps this was done on a trial basis since this new ad format didn’t appear in several other Gmail accounts that I tried. I’ll have to wait and see how many more of these new ads I get, and if they appear in other tabs as well. I am, however, already checking out Yahoo! mail.
Note to Google: If I find these Gmail ads obnoxious, others will too.
Based in Pinehurst, North Carolina, Sandy Berger is a veteran tech journalist and senior editor at aNewDomain.net covering tech tips and tricks, apps, gadgets, and consumer electronics. Email her at Sandy@aNewDomain.net. Follow her on Twitter @sandyberger, +SandyBerger on Google+, and on Facebook.
Were being bombarded by advertising at every turn and its getting very tired and boring! I prefer the value for value model as experienced with No Agenda:-)
Wow. I haven’t seen this yet in my promotions tab.
-RAP, II