IGCSE Coursework: Speaker’ Cornner
Have you ever been bombarded with a ludicrous amount of internet pop-ups whilst you were surfing the internet? Well if you have been, then you are a victim of ” Mad pop-up syndrome.” This is where pop-ups keep popping one after another on your web browser, if this has happened to you, then you have my dearest sympathies.
Internet advertisements can be very irritating and can be a pay in the neck. We have all been a victim of them at least once in our lifetime when surfing the web. This has happened to me when I was checking my email after I had clicked on one simple link, it had then made my computer screen become filled with all these advertisements, which had resulted my computer to crash as a result.
Some people may say that ads help our economy to grow, as ads are online 24/7, so there’s a constant exposure, which allows people the opportunity to see potential deals and to keep buying online things due its convenience. But to me this is a way to keep us hostage in our rooms, to get us to keep on buying these ridiculous products, products we may not even need. This is a psychological ploy to get us to buy these useless and faulty online merchandise.
According to the Telegraph, the UK spends £4.8 billion on internet advertising on average, and in 2012 the UK had spent £5 billion on advertising alone, according to the Guardian. I understand this helps firms make more money due there being more exposure, however 95% of firms use internet ads as a means of promotion. Its bad enough they have spent £5 billion in advertising alone, where as they could use such a vast amount of money on other things, instead of these annoying pop ads. Even TV ads would better as they are less questionable in comparison, as the internet has many untrustworthy deals.
These days there are ads everywhere, on the streets, signs, billboards and even in your own home, yes your home and now your computer has literally become a window to advertisements. Ads offer you seemingly good deals, but with obscure fine prints. They may have invaded our homes , streets and practically our daily lives but don’t let them hold you hostage, ads present themselves in a convincing manner and use propaganda to get their way.
We live in the digital age, where there is more advertising than ever before. This has even started on our own phones and mobile apps. More firms have spent more money to advertise on phone applications, in fact advertising has increased by 157% since 2011. This has been quite devastating to us since now all business are trying to scam us out of our money via ads. Many more firms are advertising on apps we use and play, such as an app I “used” to play which is called Subway Surfers. You may have noticed every time before you start this wondrous game, there is a dreaded ad with an X icon ,being equivalent size to a pin head. it’s so small you can hardly touch it and it’s too close to the ad that you will accidentally click on it, which then opens up pages and pages of nonsensical advertising. However this is not the worst of things, the developers of Subway surfers themselves, prompt you to watch their ads in exchange for coins, people such as me have been enticed with the idea of receiving these coins to buy their “rarest items.” I find watching their adverts quite tedious to get 100 coins ,which honestly is not worth much in in-game money.
YouTube have used a similar “technique” to get you to watch, or force you to endure through their adverts. Before Google, YouTube 2 years ago didn’t have any adverts, it was a simpler time when pop-ups weren’t a constant reminder of how greedy multi-billion corporations were for your money. Ever since Google had bought YouTube for £1.6 billion, YouTube had change for the better and for the worse. Google had place pre-loading adverts, which will force you to watch often from, 30-45 seconds of ads and you’ll find it in once in a blue moon that you’ll see a skip add button in the bottom right corner of the ad.
As for Google or should I refer to Gmail, it’s great but yet you find it rarely, that your inbox is empty. It’s always filled with junk mail from Google play store as Google is trying to promote their own apps . I have Gmail on my phone and every second it constantly vibrates and I check my phone to only see a grotesque and vulgar ad, from the one and only Google. To this day I still receive these ads, unable to stop them.
I feel pop-ups shall be forever irritating and we have to suffer by the hands of internet ads, not even ad blocks can cure ” Mad pop-up syndrome” I can only hope that one day pop-ups can be completely eradicated off the Earth. Some may say internet ads are useful perhaps, they are to some extent however I feel it’s not, as for the many reasons I have given but we are all grown ups here, so lets agree to disagree on the usefulness of ads.