When I see those big poppups coming, the FIRST thing I do is look for where the [X] close button is – I ignore everything else for the most part, including the advertisement itself. It’s like when you’re at home and a telemarketer calls… as soon as you know they’re a telemarketer you raise your defenses and are on guard. It usually doesn’t matter what they’re calling about because when you’ve already raised the guards you’re now looking for the escape route – “No thanks.”

By using an annoying delivery method, these ads psychologically frame their contact with you as being negative – getting your attention is not enough – there needs to be a conversion and I believe that big annoying ads may benefit from the former and sacrifice the latter. Twig provides a middle ground for both and I think could do well as an ad platform. I think you may be right when you say that this ad may do well (or not) with a specific type of Internet user or topic of interest, and less well in other areas – time will tell!

Curiosity may trigger clicks the first few times, but as viewers get accustomed to Twig, my guess is that there will be a diminished response rate. Although traditional obstructive “in your face” ads are annoying, they deliver a message to the end user in a direct fashion. Pop-ups appear in the forefront of my vision and therefore elicits my attention, even if it’s just for a few seconds before I hit the x on the upper right corner. Whereas Twig gives significant control to the end user by allowing us to choose whether we want to see the ad or not, eliciting attention in an indirect manner. The barrier of communication becomes the viewers themselves, making it more challenging for advertisers to deliver their message as a result.

In the end, it comes down to who Twig intends to target. Media consumers can be broadly divided into two groups; active and passive. I fall into the latter so I am likely to ignore Twig, after all it’s not hard to resist something that looks like it’s part of the tool bar. However, members of the active group may view Twig as an interactive and courteous ad delivery mechanism. This in turn drives them to click and view, and paying more attention to the actual ads because of their deliberate choice. The future of Twig remains up in the air, it could be disregarded as yet another ad bar or it could potentially become a welcoming part of a fully interactive web experience.