New York Times doing popovers?

That’s what I saw on my laptop today when I loaded my Knicks news on the NYT site. Ouch! If I was Nick I’d just say tacky, but I’m Jason so I’ll just say ugly.

What is going on over at the New York Times in terms of advertising? I delt with the interstitals, but now they are putting those pop overs on top of the contentyuck! Is this really what it’s come to?

I’d rather do the interstital. In fact, I don’t mind interstitals is they are WILDLY targeted. Like put a Knicks/NBA advertisement in front of the Knicks story and I’m happy. Keep it to one interstital per three pages.

What would you rather have:

1. An interstital ever three pages and no graphical ads on the content page (just a couple of Google Adsense advertisements).
or
2. No interstitals and four or five graphical leaderboards, banners, skyscrapers, etc. (basically what we and the NYT do right now).

I’m thinking I’d rather have the interstital.

I wonder if Brian could program this?
I wonder what Shawn Gold thinks? I wonder why Shawn doesn’t have a blog yet!
I wonder what Peter thinks?

What do you think?!