Cable company inserts ads as subscribers surf

[The Straight Story]

Cable company inserts ads as subscribers surf

NEW YORK – Mediacom Communications Corp., a cable company with more than 800,000 Internet subscribers, has tried something other U.S. Internet service providers have shied away from: It has inserted its own ads into Web pages as its subscribers surfed.

Ads for Mediacom's home phone service have shown up on the normally ad-free home pages of Google.com and Apple.com, according to subscribers.

There are only a few reports of the ads showing up, starting last week, and many Mediacom subscribers on Web forums said they had not seen any. That leaves the possibility that the ads were part of a test run rather than a full-fledged rollout.

The company won't say. Spokesman Thomas Larsen said the company's senior vice president of technology was unavailable for comment. On the company's Web forum, a complaining subscriber is told by a Mediacom representative that the issue has been "escalated to the corporate office and we are still investigating."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110303/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_internet_ads

[hunter]

1. Wow. That's revolting.

Can't wait until they start inserting advertisements in phone calls...

I can see the future: three minutes into a call from your mom, you are interrupted by an ad about erectile dysfunction.

[Drale]

2. I and many people in my generation have trained ourselves

to completely ignore advertisement. Thats one of the reasons I no long watch live TV except sports. I DVR pretty much everything and start watching it 20 minutes later so I can skip the commercials.

[onager]

4. Don't know what generation you are, but this geezer does the same...

And I've trained myself to avoid ads for YEARS now.

Like you - if I want to watch a show that will have commercials, I just DVR it. First I check the On Demand channels, since they have no or few ads, and I can fast-forward thru on demand shows to kill ugly advertising.

Now those On Demand channels have their own annoying quirk. While I'm scanning the listings, Time-Warner promos constantly run, with the usual trick of amping up the volume to ear-splitting levels. Telling me I ABSOLUTELY MUST spend $4.99 to watch the latest cinematic masterpiece from Adam Sandler or Miley Cyrus.

The MUTE button works great for that.

BTW, it really irked me that Independent Film Channel recently started breaking up its movies with commercials. The same thing that ruined American Film Channel several years ago. So if IFC is showing a movie I really want to see, I can resort to...other means to see it...

:hide:

[hobbit709]

5. There's some ads that make me NOT want to buy their crap.

[nykym]

3. Ad Block Plus

Works gggggreat on DU.