The addition to Web pages in the name of advertising that annoys me most these days is aggressive mouseover behavior attached to links. It seems like I’m visiting more and more Web sites that force me to make sure that I haven’t mistakenly left my mouse pointer over the browser while I’m reading.
Football Outsiders, one of my current favorite Web sites, has an advertising arrangement with a company called ContentLink that uses JavaScript to turn any noun it can find on the page into a link, and attaches large, intrusive tooltips to those links. This article contains many examples.
Today I was reading this article, which “helpfully” offers thumbnails of the pages each link points to, powered by Snap. I guess this is supposed to provide value to users, but it doesn’t. It’s just harassment.
The tooltips cover up text on the page, are jarring when they appear, and make navigating a Web page feel like crossing a mine field. Make it stop, please.
Update: Don’t miss the comments. Eric Wingren of snap.com is asking people for feedback on how they can improve their service.