Please Stop Hurting the Web

First disclaimer: I'm a Tron fan. Love the movie. Seriously. So when I was pointed to an article at Tom's Hardware (see that? I just linked to their site...more on that in a moment) all about the making of Tron, I wanted to read it. As I'm reading the article, I start noticing green underlined links. When you mouse-over these links, they display an ad:

Figure 1: Advertising Links

Second disclaimer: I don't mind advertising. In fact, it serves a purpose and is still how we find out about new products or services that may be useful to us. However, these 'ad links' are deceptive, and break the consistency you expect.

Again, I don't mind advertising on a site. People can monazite their sites if they wish. I do expect, though, that a link leads to more, related information. When you see the link to Tom's Hardware in the article you're reading, you expect it to lead to their site. Look at the links on the page I'm taking to task, though: Tom's Hardware Tron Article. I'd expect the "Star Wars" link to bring me to the Star Wars site, or, at least a fan site that has more information. The "Atari" link, one would expect, would bring the reader to a page that explained what Atari is/was, or, a simple history of the company.

I don't mean to single out Tom's Hardware as a site. They always present well written and informative articles. Also, they're not the only site doing with these 'corrupted' links.

My plea is this: Finding ways to advertise is fine, but, please don't do it at the expense of the consistency that makes the world wide web the simple-to-navigate experience that it is.