Via citizen-journalism guru Dan Gillmor:

How'd you like to be surfing the web at work, catching up on the news of the day, and suddenly find an unexpected audio ad on erectile disfunction blaring from your computer?

 It's one thing to click on an ad like this for sound, but an inadvertent mouse roll turns this puppy on.

I'm continually amazed by the hubris of my brethren in media. Pop-up ads? No problem. Ads that obscure content and chase you down the page? Cool! Forced interstitial video commercials? Clearly great. After all, if an advertiser pays a high CPM, it must be good!

People I like and respect think this way. And if there is a God, or even an Invisible Hand, they are doomed. 

Listen to me. I'm gonna say this slow and in simple words. Even if our grand scheme for media domination isn't the magic bullet, I know this much:

Your audience has choices now. There is almost nothing you can offer that they can't find a substitute for elsewhere. Piss them off, and they will leave. And a $2,000 CPM is worthless if M=0.

Rant over. But it does give me an excuse to run one of my favorite Hugh Macleod cartoons. Every day that passes, its truth is more apparent to me:

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To be fair to US News, the source of the ad, it probably came from an ad network. We run some network ads too but are dilligent about kicking crap like this out of our queue. If you see anything like it, let me know so I can fix it.