The internet’s top advertisers continue to pour ad impressions onto the web, and last week was a particularly good one for a particularly bad sort of banner ad: the fake Windows operating system message ad.
    Pioneered by Bonzi Software, this kind of ad is designed to look as much like an actual operating system message as possible, complete with a genuine-looking "OK" button to click on in response to the message in the gray box with the blue stripe across the top. .
   For the week ending March 11, a Bonzi fake Windows message ad was in fact the web’s most-viewed banner, according to new data from Nielsen//NetRatings.
   Coincidentally, the No. 9 banner for the week was a similar copycat Windows system-style ad from a web site called Colonize.com.
    The No. 1 Bonzi banner was the company’s shopworn "Your Internet Connection is Not Optimized" message, borrowing a Windows warning symbol—the white X on a red background—to catch the eye and featuring the word "Warning" in the blue stripe at the top. The ad is for the Bonzi product InternetBoost 2001.
   The Colonize.com banner features the same gray box with the blue stripe, the same squat size and the same facsimile of a Windows "OK" box to click on.
   The Colonize banner uses the words "Message Alert" in the blue stripe at the top and employs another symbol used by Windows to catch the eye—the black exclamation point in a yellow triangle. The copy in the ad says "You have 1 message waiting for you."
   Colonize is a web site that appears to specialize in offering users a variety of opt-in email newsletters. It was the No. 48 most-visited site on the web in February, according to Media Metrix.
   The Colonize banner also copies Bonzi’s technique of running the well-known three squares in the upper right corner that all Windows screens feature—one to minimize, one to maximize and one to close the window.
    But if a user clicks on the box with the X to close it, he is taken to the web site instead.
   In the Colonize banner, the exclamation point blinks on and off, which is not how it would appear in an actual Windows message.
   Colonize is not only copying Bonzi’s misleading ads, it appears to be copying Bonzi’s predilection for remaining out of the public eye.
    As with Bonzi, there is no sign on the Colonize web site as to how to contact the company except through generic email addresses. There is no real-world address and no phone number.
  Colonize did not respond to Media Life’s phone and email requests for details about the banner campaign. A company receptionist said she was under instruction not to reveal anything at all about the company, not even how old or how large it is.
    The company is based in Ithaca, N.Y., home of Cornell University. Colonize Co-CEO Noah Goodhart runs the company with help from his brother Jonah. Both Goodharts are Cornell alumni.
    While Media Life could not confirm by press time that the Noah Goodhart behind Colonize is the same one that graduated from Cornell, we concluded that the odds of there being a second Noah Goodhart who has been heavily involved in internet issues running a dot.com in Ithaca are rather slim.
   At Cornell, Noah wrote an honors essay on the role of the internet in political parties, which helped lead him to pursue graduate studies in political science at Yale University. Noah, who graduated from Cornell in 1997, has also moderated an electronic discussion list about politics.
   During his junior year, according to an article he wrote for Cornell Magazine, he studied in Washington, D.C. He also served as a summer White House intern, and helped launch the White House web site. Goodhart writes in the article that he does not recall meeting a certain higher-profile fellow intern, but he did get to shake Bill Clinton’s hand a time or two.
  

-Jeremy Schlosberg is the senior editor for new media. Staff writer Marty Beard contributed to the reporting of this story.

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