I'm not sure that volume is adjusted, but rather that the bias of the equalisation is significantly higher volume than makes for high quality audio, so the effect is noise and offensive volume, compared to properly balanced audio from the material between them. This is true of broadcast TV as well, and several times advertisers have been compelled to not exceed certain values, but these respites are short lived before the average volume and obnoxiousness creeps back in. It seems that the desire to put off potential viewers exists online too. I have *never* bought anything based on online or TV adverts, and most are annoying and pointless.

I only recall a very few advertisments (among which are the "Wide Mouthed Frog" Malteser advert, the "Creature Comforts" British Gas adverts and the "Don't forget the Pancakes on Jif Lemon Day"... all of which were amusing or clever, and not obnoxiously loud).

It depends what your site is for. If you're selling things, ads on it are going to be for stuff on your site, obviously.
If however you don't sell anything directly, then you're going to need ad revenue to subsidize it, especially if you want to use it as your business.



The Jedi Master

The heart of the issue for me is all in how it's done. I don't even really care if the presentation is a bit cluttered or whatnot, so long as things aren't annoying me, I'm fine.

Annoying is having to do things like reach for the volume control, having to click somewhere because of tricky mouse-overs, popovers, fake dialogs, videos appearing in a screen filling overlay... things that in general obscure the content I have visited to see.

And to be clear, I'm not even talking about advertisements in a good few of those examples. News websites that start playing a recap of the evening broadcast just because I clicked to read a local article? There isn't a clickable advertisement in sight. Sometimes the content I clicked to view isn't even in sight. It's hidden behind this big streaming video that I didn't ask to see, and often has nothing to do with what I want to see. It's not even an ad.

And worse, they are having to pay for bandwidth to stream video that I do not want to see. Total waste of money and time.

What's interesting is that with quite a few small town news/newspaper websites, they'll have the article content in a narrow column, with many banner and column ads surround it, all from mostly local businesses. And this doesn't bother me a bit, nor do I have any inclination to block them. The content is there, and the prominent ads, even if a bit densely packed (even cluttered), respect my time and visit by NEVER forcing me interact with them unless I want to.

Passing billboards along side the highway, versus having to stop and move the signs out of the middle of the road so I can continue to drive.

What he said. In spades.

Yep, x2000

They are an annoyance but I really hate it when they don't make the close button or X easily noticeable.