Real Money Attempts Subscription Suicide

I don’t know who made the decision to post mouse over in text pop up ads on the subscription-based Real Money, but I can think of any number of suitable tortures for this person, starting with Waterboarding and moving on up. I was going to suggest a lobotomy, but its obviously too late for that.

I not only write for Real Money, but actually read it — however, I can no longer do so, as the pages have become so infested as to be totally unreadable.

I heartily recommend putting this on the free side of the site — TheStreet.com — but on RM? Absurd.

Long time readers will recall I recommended TheStreet.com (TSCM) stock back when the it was $3-4 and Cramer’s show was new (see my prior comments on TSCM from November 2005, and again in February 2006 and April ’06). I suspect that this highly intrusive advertising — on a subscription product, yet — will begin a cascade of customer complaints. Unless they change this suicidal policy soon, TSCM may see a slew of cancellations — and that’s not good for the stock price.

As I have said before, to err is Human, but it requires an MBA to really fuck up.

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Discussions found on the web:
  1. Tregonsee commented on Dec 18

    Well said! Both IE and Firefox have several free add-ons which will stop this nonsense. Unfortunately, most feed readers use the rendering engines but not the add-ons from IE, and so you are unable to block this visual spam.

  2. glenn_in_MA commented on Dec 18

    Just click “Print this story”….but don’t print. The print format is easier to read anyway and the spam links disappear! IMHO

  3. smallchange commented on Dec 18

    Waterbording Americans does not qualify as torture!

  4. michael schumacher commented on Dec 18

    TSC coming up a little “short” on the year..

    Only Cramer would try something like pushing ads to paying subs. That is sort fo the reason you subscribe to something…no effing ads.

    You know it just might stick…..people are sheep and the bulk of cramer’s audience is……nevermind.

    Ciao
    MS

  5. Loosechange commented on Dec 18

    Snowboarding Americans does not qualify as torture!

  6. Bob A commented on Dec 18

    It would be cool if you could make it so when you mouse over the many pictures of bozo’s head on every page, he exploded into a million pieces!

  7. Barry Ritholtz commented on Dec 18

    By the way, I imagine Cramer hates this stuff — he is all about the content.

  8. Josh commented on Dec 18

    I completely agree with you. That’s why I use Firefox and many of it’s ad-blocking capabilities.

    Follow this link to instructions on how to block flash, frame ads, and in-line ads with Firefox.

  9. michael schumacher commented on Dec 18

    BR-

    Looking at what qualifies as journalism over at the Street I seriously doubt that Cramer is “all about the content”.

    Here’s a sample:

    that MBI bailout of $1 billion was reported as an “investment”

    No major mention of the ECB bailout plan just that “stocks are up because of it” but fail to go into ANY detail about it.

    and his scribe that the “Fed Blew it” was just like a 9 year old child who was told he could’nt have that piece of candy in the check out aisle.

    That’s just what I can recall…there are ALOT more.

    Ciao
    MS

  10. Groty commented on Dec 18

    What an arrogant and pompous post. You not only berate the person who came up with the idea, but you managed to insult a large portion of your readers who have MBAs.

    I never thought anyone could come off as a bigger prick than Don Luskin, but I think you pulled it off.

    Congrats.

    ~~~

    BR: I didn’t say ALL MBAs: half of my friends have biz degrees, and I don’t hold them responsible for Enron, CDOs, Orange County Collapse, off-sheet asset accounting, the S&L Crisis, Stock buybacks, Tyco, Analyst Scandals, etc. Yet MBAs were involved in all of those.

    Perhaps a formula will help you understand this better:
    evil person + MBA = Big Trouble

    My list of lawyer offenses is even longer (thats the other half of my friends). I am an equal opportunity offender.

    Life is short . . . Lighten up a bit . . .

  11. strasser commented on Dec 18

    Barry,

    You are absolutely right… “unreadable”. After being a subscriber for over 10 years, we canceled this summer. We wrote several times to the editor about our concerns and there was never even a response. Who wants to pay to see ads?

  12. Whammer commented on Dec 18

    As an MBA myself, I think Groty needs to take a pill.

    Plus, how can we forget the MBA President himself and shoo-in for every list of “Worst Presidents Ever” for eternity?

    BTW, after GWF Bush, Harvard MBA, do we really need Mitt Romney, Harvard MBA, next?

  13. internet-anon commented on Dec 18

    1) use firefox.

    2) for work computers w/firewalls/application admin lockouts use firefox portable edition.

    3) get adblock

    done.

  14. Michael C. commented on Dec 18

    I am reading Rev Sharks commentary and the word “acting” is pop-up highlighted in order for me to find an acting school near me.

    Now that’s what I call target advertising and value added.

  15. John commented on Dec 18

    Barry, you are quite correct. I sent an email to TSC stating the same thing about the obnoxious pop-ups in RealMoney site. I hope they get rid of them. As others have mentioned, the ad-block add plugin for FF eliminates the Vibrant ads. I certainly recommend it.

  16. Robin Walsby commented on Dec 18

    Barry – flashswitch.com may help – turns off flash when required which I think the ads are prgrammed in

    Rob

  17. matt m. commented on Dec 18

    Not a big Cramer guy, but the stock(TSCM) is one of the only media companies to be flirting w/ a 52 week high.

  18. brig commented on Dec 18

    Just add *.us.intellitxt.com to your restricted site list in IE. Problem solved.

  19. Michael C. commented on Dec 18

    >>>Just add *.us.intellitxt.com to your restricted site list in IE. Problem solved.<<< What is supposed to happen if I've done that? I tried it and still get the roll over ads.

  20. Bob A commented on Dec 18

    TURN THAT CRAP OFF!

    When a visitor passes the curser over these words, the Vibrant ad pops up. When it does, you will see a small help symbole. Click on it and a window pops-up and it contains a simply link to click to shut off these Vibrant ads. It’s that simple.

    Note: If you have cookies disabled you need to specifically allow a cookie for:
    thestreet.us.intellitxt.com

    Tried it.. it works

    (thanks to cnet forums)

    I’m still working on the “blow up the person’s head under the mouse” thing

  21. Mike G. commented on Dec 18

    Oh, that a hacker would hack that particular page you highlight so that when you go anywhere near any link you get visual/audio queue that says “DON’T BUY! DON’T BUY!” . When you mouse over the editors it would show/say “THEY KNOW NOTHING!”. Then when the frustrated user closes the obnoxious TSC page they hear “That was easy!”

    *LMFAO* That would be soooo funny.

  22. Leisa commented on Dec 18

    Agree Barry. I had to use the flash blocker because the RM site was crashing my system. Further, those underlined words are the most ridiculous form of advertising (intrusively so) I’ve ever seen. I had having content that I pay for whored out in such a way.

  23. larry elliott commented on Dec 18

    Agree totally. In fact am seriously considering canceling RM due to the fact that most of the posts are on the Street anyway or at least later in the day. Plus the street seems to have more info and less blather from Marcin and other crybabies.

  24. Ant commented on Dec 18

    Unfortunately, most feed readers use the rendering engines but not the add-ons from IE, and so you are unable to block this visual spam.

    @Tregonsee – mercifully, this is not true. I never see those ads regardless of what app I’m using (including my feed reader) and I don’t even need to dick around with editing my hosts file or other such distractions.

    The blocker I use is called AdMuncher and at the risk of sounding like a zealot it is one of the most worthwhile apps I’ve ever installed.

    I have mine configured to block ads selectively because there are places I *want* to see ads – Google AdWords is one, blogs I patronize is another. My pet peeve (like Barry’s) is sites I *pay* for inflicting distracting ads on me, and this completely eliminates the annoyance.

    FWIW

  25. tom commented on Dec 18

    RM crashed my system too. I was under a 30 day free trial of RM but after looking at the site for a week I knew I was going to cancel it. Besides Cramer’s blathering is just plain irritating!

  26. David commented on Dec 19

    I noticed that they recently started doing the same thing on Safehaven.com (a site that I read and contribute to). Which is a shame, because it’s really a great site.

    I just do not like those in-text green ad links. They look so cheap and it is really just awful and distracting.

  27. Below The Crowd commented on Dec 19

    Brief Notes

    Lots going on this week: Adding to my comments on retail a couple of days ago, I stopped by Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) yesterday to pick up a couple of essentials. It seemed quite slow for a pre-Christmas week evening. Their…

  28. David commented on Dec 20

    Just want to add an update to my comment.

    Amazingly, within the space of this one evening, Safehaven has already decided to drop its pop-up link text ads (turns out site owner Bruce was already considering this move). Thanks Bruce! Keep up the great work.

    I guess this goes to show you that some people do listen to suggestions. Maybe you guys will convince Real Money to do the same and pull their text ads as well?

  29. Conor commented on Dec 20

    I could not agree more. I tried the pop-up views from Snap.com (which shows the site, not ads) on my own blog and took them down within a day. It wasn’t even that I did not get complaints. I couldn’t even view my own site and navigate around to edit correctly. The worst part was that it popped up on every link, including images that had a link to them…quite pointless.

  30. BamBam commented on Dec 20

    I say get it off the free site too. The articles are unreadable.

    Let me add that I also hate how TheStreet.com ruined the Stockpickr website.

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