Want to watch one of the nation’s premier media organizations destroy itself?   The Washington Post, which now gets so much revenue from its overpriced Kaplan subsidiary that Reuters refers to the company as an education organization, has a site that describes advertising specifications for its digital properties. That’s smart.  We have a rate card too for our digital properties too.

Even better, unlike the Post, we create individual rate cards for properties that actually list prices.  But today’s head-shaking sad moment was seeing that the very accessible advertising spec page includes rates for intrusive ads and roadblocks.

Roadblocks are a relatively benign sale where every ad slot on a web page is sold to the same advertiser.  We do that too, and most consumers are likely indifferent to the practice.

But intrusive ads are just that — they’re the little window that pops under your browser or something that covers the content or audio that blares through your speakers when a page is loaded. Most online marketers know that only the world’s biggest brands or those who don’t care can get away with intrusive advertising.

But the height of hubris may be advertising for intrusive advertising on a publicly accessible web page.  For those of you interested, the company allows pop-under ads to be as big as 720 pixels wide — about half a screen for most casual users.   But remember, if you want the “full page takeover”, you only get 15 seconds. After all, your consumers probably get frustrated when content driven sites try to take over the browsing experience for 20 seconds so keeping the takeover limited to 15 seconds shows the company cares.