Monday, October 23, 2006

Animated Mortgage Ads


Ok, I just have to say this: what is the deal with all those mortgage ads you see everywhere, with the dancing silhouettes? I don't know, maybe they're not really "everywhere" but they are definitely on the AOL webmail page all the time. For a while, the theme was having buttons for all 50 states-- as individual nibs on an ear of corn or spots on a ladybug and a gazillion other variations that I can't remember right now.
But lately, they have switched to dancing people. Today, it's a bunch of guys in cowboy hats clapping back and forth. At least that is better than the last one, with a man and a woman dancing-- there was something about the way the man was undulating his pelvis as he advanced towards the woman that always looked really creepy to me! That kind of move would make we want to throw a drink on a guy at a club, not get a mortgage from him! At least the image is just a silhouette so you can't tell if he's doing that bite-the-lower-lip thing!
But I guess the point is to get your attention, and these ads do accomplish that. I wonder what the next dance move will be!

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

Call me old fashioned, but I doubt I would ever transact something as important as a mortgage loan based on a companies dancing ad.

Even if they had the best interest rate around, I would still find myself thinking "but aren't they the cheesy company with the stupid dancing people?"

Anonymous said...

I agree — and, the font choice makes me CRINGE. My personal rule: if they can't/won't pay a professional designer, they won't get my business! Yee-haw!

Anonymous said...

Thank you! I thought I was the only one who noticed. The one that irritates me the most is the woman wearing a bikini top and a black pencil skirt while wearing a huge pair of headphones.

Asset gatherer said...

I normally don't like all of the ads, but there was something about that couple dancing that cracked me up! It was so over the top. And yes-- if a guy were dancing like that with me in real life, I would be really creeped out.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing what I (and, likely, many) have thought. Obviously, the dancing gimmick is working as people are noticing the ads. However, the "ick" factor (esp. the pelvic grind you mentioned) seems to negate that.

IRA said...

Yeah, I kept seeing the dancing couple on yahoo. Like J.D., I noticed the ads, but not the name of the mortgage company. So how is that effective advertising? I guess if you subscribe to the notion that 'sex sells' and don't go much further beyond that, this is what you get.

HC said...

I haven't seen them in awhile, but I remember a few years ago when every mortgage ad arranged the 50 states in some incredibly phallic configuration.

Gave me the CREEPS.

Tiredbuthappy said...

Apparently you struck a chord with a lot of people, Madame.

I haven't seen these. Maybe I've just gotten really good at blocking out wiggling things in ad space on the internet.

Anonymous said...

Man I hate those ads. They are so weird and pointless. I have to say that mortgage ads just get worse and worse.

Bitty said...

I'm almost afraid to admit to my fascination with the particular ad that Madame X has posted, just that one. It's hypnotic.

I don't know why. It has nothing to do with mortgages OR cowboy hats...

mOOm said...

I saw one with bouncing knitted penguins in barrels. It was really cute :)

mapgirl said...

The dancing man and woman on the roof always scared me because it looked like they were fighting to me and not dancing. I always thought they looked like they were sparring. creepy!

Anonymous said...

you're right: yes they are EVERYWHERE!
they ARE creepy. but sometimes i find myself just watching them like the hamster dance hypnosis-thing kicking in.
& i agree with chica, i hate that headphones one even more.

~ib

Anonymous said...

gee, i saw the dancing man and woman on the roof at the spanish version of Yahoo ... i have to say that i get myself very atracted by those figures....

mark.

Anonymous said...

Do people really refinance their mortgages with banner ads? I keep seeing one with an animated tattoo gun. Tattooed biceps=good financial advice.

Rumgoat

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't think of doing business with these people either, but the dancing cowboy's pretty sexy - a masculine guy shaking his broad shoulders and narrow hips.

Anonymous said...

It's as annoying as spam. I guess they must be getting some customers because they keep using them. I put a stickie.app over it myself.

Anonymous said...

To find this page, I googled "banner ad dancing people mortgage". I have been trying to figure out where these ads come from for a while now. Who pays for these bizarre animations? (And why?)
My officemate and I are graphic designers and we have a special love/hate relationship with these ads--mostly hate, of course. But we can't help but recieve immense amounts of enteratinment seeing how offensive or random the next one will be. It really got out of hand with the gyrating dance couple on the rooftop. Now they have the Chihuahua donned with goggles, slipping on a reflective floor. Makes sense to me...
One theory is that these ads are made in another country where the topic of mortage or refinacing is yet to be translated.
Either way, the company's brand image is in real trouble. What a phenomenon.

La Pantera Rosa said...

I'm sorry they annoy you guys but the cowboys turn me on! They make me smile ^_^

Anonymous said...

I love these ads. The couple is the best. I wish I could move like that.

Anonymous said...

I hate them.

Anonymous said...

I saw one of these a few days ago and I thought that it was an ad for that guitar player, Esteban(or whatever his name his). But yeah, I'm with you guys about how creepy wierd the ads are, so I guess they've accomplished something by their efforts. I usually have an objective view of advertising and it rarely ever influences my buying habits. When I googled this your blog came up first.

Anonymous said...

These are by far the most annoying ads in the history of the internet. I try to avoid any site that I know regulary runs these hideous, obnoxious, and torturous ads.

Anonymous said...

I hate this one most of all.

Chubby girl and guy dancing:

http://adverlicio.us/node/2381

Anonymous said...

Ha..who ever designs these stupid flash animations needs to go back to art school!!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Mortgage refinancing equates variouslenders to get lowest refinance rate available. And refinance calculators figures whether it's worth chasing a lower interest rate.

cheers
gudipudi
------------------------
www.mortgagerefinancing.com/

Eric said...

Punchline:

1) I viscerally hate the Lowermybills (LMB) ads, and
2) they can be killed by uninstalling Adobe Flash Player.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14157

I work all day at my computer and the dancing/jiggling/humping ads from LMB are unbelievably distracting. They appear on almost every webpage I open, and seem to be eBay and AOL's leading advertiser, because the ads are absolutely everywhere on AOL - on the welcome screen, in my mailbox, on each letter I open, etc.

They continue to get more frantic and more obnoxious as time passes. The dry-humping morons on the rooftop, the dancing/jiggling (cowboys?); whatever. I just can't stand it.

I could go on and on, repeating many of the rants of people before me, but here's a solution:

Kill Flash Player and you kill the dancing cretins.

Maybe Flash is required for some sites, but that cost is NOTHING compared to the joy of being able to surf even the pages of Weather.com without seeing the frantic LMB ads. Many of the places where the LMB ads used to load, now only load static ads. They clearly test to see if you have Flash and run a different ad for computers without it loaded. I am getting a lot of University of Phoenix and Netflix, both of which are infinitely preferable to LMB. The rare LMB ads that load do not move. It truly does my heart good.

Check this out for annoying: a number of months ago, LMB somehow corrupted my browser, and every time one of their ads loaded it opened a window to the LMB website. No doubt a tactic to raise their traffic numbers, it was intensely annoying because every time it opened a window it captured my cursor. So, if I was typing, I had to stop and click the window closed to recapture my cursor. Often, I would have typed a sentence or two before I realized what was happening. I bought Stopzilla to kill what I thought were pop-ups, but it didn't work because the corrupted file essentially clicked on the ad to open the window and thus circumvented the pop-up blocker. It took me many hours of trial and error with tech support, etc., to find out that I had to reload my browser to correct the corrupted file.

To say I despise LMB is a monumental understatement. Their cost to my productivity has been tremendous over the years.

Kill Flash Player - Kill the Dancing Morons.

Anonymous said...

Why they use the gay characters is beyond me. How wish that I had the bastard who designed these ads tied up in my basement and every time I encountered one of these, I would just go beat the idiot with a ball bat.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I agree dancing man must be stopped at all cost.

I sometimes see him when I close my eyes.

Anonymous said...

No need to get rid of Flash Player. Just install Adblock Plus and add one single filter: "http://*LOWERMYBILLS*".
Personally, none of the other ads bother me, so I don't have any other filters.

Works like a charm. No more dancing, no more tattoos, no more haircuts, no more bouncing pigs.

-Rick

Anonymous said...

I'm just looking toward to the day when all the morons who sign up for "cheap" mortgages default when they lose their jobs at WalMart and have to pay a lawyer $1,000's to file bankruptcy :-)

Anonymous said...

I think the adds are about as refreshing as watching a big blowfly trying to lite on your vanilla ice cream cone !!!!

Anonymous said...

It seems to be the desperate new tool of advertisers to irritate the hell out of potential customers and it's worse than SPAM mail.

Take the HEAD ON commercial, repeating it over and over just like SPAM and it only irritates people. I for one turn the channel immediately, way to go advertiser!

The dancing moron ads sprung from the tv version of the cell phone with mp3 capabilty, where the guy is walking normally down the street while his shadow is doing a spastic dance to the music. DUMB!

The siloutte ad that really gets me is the man dancing like he's try to shake ants out of his pants.

If I ever saw someone actually dancing like that, I'd bash them senseless.

I'd do the same to anyone who actually patronizes these so called merchants.

Anonymous said...

What about the quite black chic that is caught off guard dancing and doesnt notice until they get up on her. She is hot, sexy and funny.

Anonymous said...

What a trend it is, hahah, and gets under my skin.. the latest is some chick in the office, dancing and the she spins as if caught by surprise with an astonished look on her face.. actually I've seen 2 to 3 of these with different people, the one I saw today is some guy spooks a white chick dancing in the office and she turns around and shoves him... if this person is getting paid to make these ads then I'm definately in the wrong business

Anonymous said...

I hate(!!!) those 'caught by surprise' office dancers. most of the others are not terribly offensive (and the guys in hats I found vaguely amusing; cajun dancing is going to make me refi my loan over the internet???), but those 'anonymous' women are so obviously staged that I want to smack someone.

Cheesy ads are bad enough; just please don't insult my intelligence!

Anonymous said...

Well, even though I'm late in the posting thread...my coworkers and I can't stand these lame attempts at advertising.

I mean really...is this the only purpose for Flash? Undulating silhouettes do not exude financial confidence. Sorry guys.

Oh, and if you want to keep flash installed, and block these annoyances, there's a Firefox addon. It loads the page properly, but places a little "f" image on the rectangle where the .swf file would normally load. Click on the "f" and then the flash object loads at your command, rather than forcing you to endure squirmy web content.

Get the addon here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433

If you don't have Firefox, it's free, and gives you complete control of the internet...(forget about Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Netscape, etc.) You'll need Firefox before you can use the addon:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Say goodbye to the wiggly cowboys once and for all.

Anonymous said...

This article explains the orgins of these weird ads

http://faculty.govst.edu/pa/Advertising/Pitch/1-hi/obstrusive.html

Anonymous said...

A web designer by profession, I find the ads to truly reduce the overall user experience of pretty much ANY site that has the misfortune of relying on advertising houses that use the banners. They are so ugly, distracting and stupid that I usually resort to immeadiately closing the page, and navigating somewhere else. I fear that this will lead to a trend where advertising dollars are pumped into creating the most annoying and distracting ads possible.

Anonymous said...

http://www.juhll.com/

It's a multimillion dollar company.