Who would have expected to see a giant image ad on Gmail’s sign out page? For now, it’s just an experiment and it’s displayed when you log out from Gmail, but I bet that Gmail users won’t be happy to see it when it will no longer be an experiment.
One of the great things about Gmail was that the ads were relevant and unobtrusive. The huge ad for Vistaprint is not relevant and it’s really obtrusive. “With Gmail, you’ll never see pop-ups or untargeted banner ads. Instead we display text ads and related links you might find useful and interesting.” This was one of the top 10 reasons to try Gmail, but it was removed from this page.
A Gmail help page explains that “occasionally we may show a banner ad on the Gmail logout page. This ad is different from other ads in Gmail since it’s not related to the content of your Gmail account. Instead, it’s the same type of ad that appears on the YouTube homepage.”
{ Thanks, Gary. }
