“I find those ads on the internet really annoying; I never look at them.”

Anon. (OK it was one of my teenage daughters)

As you may be aware, those strips at the bottom or up the side of your web page are called banners and ‘skyscrapers’. Increasingly, you can ‘mouse over’ them to expand them and/or click to play a video. All (tell me if you know an exception) will take you through to a landing page on another website, generally owned by the advertiser. You will also have encountered films that play before the video you wanted to see (AKA pre-roll) […]