A few weeks ago, you might have noticed a new advertising feature on thenewstribune.com. Just below the navigation bar near the top of the page, a large billboard ad would appear and expand vertically down the page, pushing the news and photos down with it.

This is a form of interruption advertising which, of course, has been around for decades (and it most popular on TV). It really only works if the interruption isn't so great that it aggravates the audience and drives them away. So we agreed that our new expanding billboard ads would come with limits: no visitor to the web site would more see than two per visit.

The problem was the ads were scheduled incorrectly and there didn't seem to be any limit. Naturally, this frustrated many users and we received about a dozen emails complaining about the intrusion. To further the problem, the "Close" link on some of the ads didn't work properly and sent visitors to the advertiser's site instead of closing the ad. This resulted in more frustration.

I'm happy to report that both problems have been fixed. So, while you'll still see a couple expanding billboard ads on our site each time you visit, we hope you understand that we will continue to look for new ways to deliver attractive audiences (that's you!) to our local advertisers and support the news gathering and web publishing operation here. We just need to work harder to do it right the first time.