I showed the ad to my wife. She had never seen it before and I wanted her first impressions of it. I did make the mistake of telling her that it was a rebreather ad before she saw it.
Still, the first thing she pointed out is that you can't even see the rebreather in the picture of the frontal view of the girl.
The only picture that seems to highlight the rebreather at all is the one with the "KISS" on her butt but you sort of have to know that there is a "KISS" rebreather for that to mean anything.
This isn't the only ad like that on the board. A lot of these ads on the board are big on color and animation but you have to look pretty hard to see what they are selling. I noticed one yesterday that was a bunch of large UW sceens scrolling by with a name in smallish print at the top that was there only intermittantly. I don't remember the name and I don't know who they are or what they sell. What I do know is that it takes up a fair portion of the screen for a bunch of animation to tell me nothing.
I've noticed other adds that are up by the menue bar where on some pages, I can't use the menue. For example, if I pull down the search window it opens up behind the ad and I can't use it. I have to go to a different page before I can use the search function. Again, I have no idea who the ad was for or what they sell. I was only trying to see the search window.
As I see it, it's just a bunch of large pictures and animation eating up space, processing power slowing down the board and interfering with functionality. My computer is a few years old and I have a modem coneection but of the sites that I use regularly scubaboard is about the slowest and I think all the graphics has to be part of the reason.
I'm no advertising pro but I tend to think that the Google-Ad people just aren't very good at advertising. It really just looks like a lot of clutter to me.
I like scubaboard and I don't want Pete to go broke. My comments are intended to be constructive.
Regarding the "skin" in the ad. Several people seemed a little upset by the use of the term "risque". To be sure, there are people here from all over the world, of all ages and with different backgrounds. I've lived all my life in the midwest US, I'm 48, married with two grown children (a boy and a girl). My own opinion is that many women ought to wear more clothes. I wouldn't exactly say I'm offended but I don't think these girls hanging out all over the place is the least bit attractive or classy. Just kind of trashy.
Blox said
Get real - it's a woman in a bikini. If you don't want your daughters to see women in bikinis, you don't only want to keep them off the board, but you also want to make sure that you keep them far away from beaches in any kind of warm climate. And make sure that they don't watch TV. And ensure, they don't read magazines or newspapers. Or leave the house in the first place.
I don't know how many children you've raised but I'll tell you. Limiting the junk your children are exposed to and trying to teach them how to dress is a full time job. We don't watch TV here. I find all the "grow a bigger penis" commercials especially distastful. We don't hang out at public beaches and we do/don't do lots of other things to avoid having to look at all the junk that we don't want to see. Limiting exposure to the constant bombardment is not easy. There just isn't much "G" rated content in the media anymore.
So yes, scubaboard needs to give some thought to the image they want to project. Whether anyone likes it or not, for every person who thinks a picture of a girl in a bikini on the screen is no big deal, there is some old fart like me who thinks it's kind of low class in that context. What scubaboard has to decide is whether or not they care. There may come the day when I turn off scubaboard like I did the TV. I hope not but it could happen.