Richmedia – An Adsense Format Too Far?

I was shocked and disappointed this morning when I saw the news reported by JenSense that Google are going to try “Rich Media” advertising formats through their network

Google AdSense is moving beyond the traditional text and graphical advertising to rich media, including interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. AdSense began contacting publishers last week to be involved in the rich media limited beta test.

OK, apparently they are more likely to be site targeted rather than contextual (bloody good job!) but there is very little information out there apart from rumours because of the people taking part being under NDA.

Do Google not get it? The reason we liked Google Adwords in the first place is because they were text.  Let me spell it out Larry and Sergey,  they were not annoying. Now they are going to throw the most annoying and intrusive forms of online media into the mix. Including the evil evil evil intersitials.  You know the ones, the ad that stops you getting to the content you wanted and forces you to wait for a full page ad to load so you can click it off and get to the page you expected to see in the first place. Nice.

Advertising agencies will absolutely love this, I know I used to work for one. They will love it not because these ads work but because they can charge higher production fees for planning, building and deploying them. So they will be a success in terms of ad budget, just not in any way that matters (ie. customer opinion and ROI).

Would you allow these ads on your blog?