5

Original Woot! ad:

http://ads.stackoverflow.com/ads/stackoverflow-ad1.png

Redesigned Woot! ad:

Woot you! http://ads.stackoverflow.com/ads/blendingin-1.png

Has anyone clicked the new Woot! ads and made their designer cry?

http://ads.stackoverflow.com/ads/adResults-stackoverflow.png

I blame Dan Neely and gnovice for the misery they have brought upon us.

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  • Not even a screenshot? – random Oct 8 '09 at 0:04
  • 5
    That's bright enough to blind a Smurf. – Bill the Lizard Oct 8 '09 at 0:16
  • Didn't even know there was an ad already there until checking the edit version of your post. – random Oct 8 '09 at 0:33
  • Why blame me?! I actually liked the old ads. I guess I somehow got my name entangled in all this after I couldn't stand looking at the word "add" in the question title and edited it. – gnostradamus Oct 8 '09 at 15:43
  • 2
    Does this mean MS Paint is now officially a professional graphic design tool? – user27414 Oct 8 '09 at 15:45
  • 3
    Also, I think I can smell my retinas burning from looking at the new one. – gnostradamus Oct 8 '09 at 15:46
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    @Jon B Are you kidding? MS Paint is indeed a pro graphic design tool. Scour the answers here on Meta, you'll see a definite oneuppin between Photoshop drop shadows and Paint freehand circles. It's on! – random Oct 8 '09 at 15:50
  • @random: don't you have the freehand circle plugin for Photoshop? – user27414 Oct 8 '09 at 15:52
  • Who needs a plugin? Paint is where all the mastery happens. – random Oct 8 '09 at 15:58
  • 8
    Photoshop is just a Paint plugin. – alex Oct 12 '09 at 13:18
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    @Glorfindel why did you resurrect this old dinosaur? What's more, none of the links work. EDIT You got rid of an obsolete tag. I get it now. – Mari-Lou A Jan 10 '19 at 11:54

13 Answers 13

Active Oldest Votes
11

I love it!

I have some feedback for woot: there should be something blinking - rapidly. Maybe the foreground and background could exchange colors a few times per second. And I'd like it to be more engaging, you know, like I should be able to click to punch or shoot something. Like a monkey. And, this pretty much goes without saying, it should expand to a larger size when my mouse gets near it, covering up some content that I wasn't going to read anyway.

Keep up the good work!

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  • If somebody upvotes you, I'll cry. – perbert Oct 10 '09 at 0:08
  • 1
    There, I upvoted him! Can you hear my evil laughter, ǘôyägæŕ? – alex Oct 12 '09 at 13:23
  • :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( – perbert Oct 12 '09 at 17:22
  • 3
    your suggestions have merit! – Jeff Atwood Oct 14 '09 at 11:11
10

And the Circle of Feedback is complete.

If the other woot ad was obnoxious because it blended in too much, then this ad is the complete opposite of obnoxious (super kickass awesome!) because it completely clashes with the site.

I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

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  • The funny thing is that I clicked on woot when the "blended" ad appear. This new add has been "transparent" for me!! until this today – OscarRyz Oct 13 '09 at 22:48
5

How do you guys see these things?!

If it weren't for MSO, I might never even know about new ads on SO...

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2

Oddly, the only time I seem to notice ads is just after hit Reload to update the page in question. It takes a moment for the screen to clear, and my eyes seem to take a quick trip around the screen during that moment. Of course, then I can't click on the ad because it's already gone.

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  • +1 I did exactly that, went back and refreshed about 20 times, and didn't see the ad again. So I came to MSO to find out what it was about. I knew if it was interesting there would be a thread about it. – Patrick McElhaney Oct 20 '09 at 17:43
2

I think an ad like this is just as bad as an animated ad.

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  • 1
    I'm afraid that if we click too much in it, they'll start doing animated gif ads next. They have already gone to the extent of using Comic Sans! – perbert Oct 8 '09 at 0:17
1

I try to ignore ads entirely.

Coincidentally, I was explaining to my daughter only the other day, that some advertisers are basically dishonest and you can't believe what they show you in magazine ads for clothes, cosmetics, lifestyle items in general.

A bit harsh and paranoid, I know, but I'm probably better at recogising BS than she is at the age of fifteen.

I don't think you can trust web advertisers any more than print advertisers.

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1

Since it seems their ad director monitors this site, I wonder if woot would be willing to share the results of this ad vs the last one. It'd be interesting to see some data better than annecdotal "I liked it"/"I hated it" postings.

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1

We deserve what we get :'(

alt text http://ads.stackoverflow.com/ads/adResults-stackoverflow.png

The spike (if I read correctly graphs without any kind of scale whatsoever), seems to be the day or the day later to when this question was posted.

Goes to show that reverse psicology works, that we like making people suffer, or that we like bright ads.

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  • 4
    I clicked on the new ad just to make someone cry. I didn't realize it would be you (or I would've clicked twice). – mmyers Oct 14 '09 at 21:57
  • I cry in compasion to the poor fellow. I'm (thanks God) not responsible for those ads. – perbert Oct 14 '09 at 22:01
  • That was unexpected... – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Nov 5 '09 at 21:46
1

sad panda http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/9771/sadpanda.png

Time to add ads.stackoverflow.com to my hosts file. till this stupid campaign is over

Looks like this angered someone so I will add a correction:

  1. Right click cmd run as administrator
  2. notepad c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
  3. Add line: 127.0.0.1 ads.stackoverflow.com

No more blinding woot ads.

Will be happy to undo this when the stupid ad is gone.

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  • 2
    How will you know it's over if you always have it blocked? – random Nov 3 '09 at 0:15
  • Jeff posted a date somewhere ... Ill put a note on my calender to check for its goneness next year. – waffles Nov 3 '09 at 0:23
  • The woot! ads or were you referring to the date of the end of the badge sponsorship? – random Nov 3 '09 at 0:24
  • You know what? The obnoxious ads got more clicks than the "too blended that fell in the background" ads! One user is not changing that. – perbert Nov 3 '09 at 0:54
  • 1
    despair.com/idiocy.html – waffles Nov 3 '09 at 1:52
0

Wow, that's bright. I won't need any more caffeine today.

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0

I did notice the ads when they switched the design. Since then, I have clicked the ads every morning to see what they were selling that day (and with intent to buy if it is something I might like to have around being offered at a reasonable price).

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0

I'm not going to lie... http://shirt.woot.com supplies my entire t-shirt wardrobe. I must have 20+ shirts from there.

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0

No. It did attract my attention but I wouldn't click it as the original advert was the most awesome advert I have ever seen.

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