UX Dark Design Patterns — Disguised Ads

Today I’m going to cover the dark design pattern “Disguised Ads”. These are advertisements that are disguised as other kinds of content or navigation elements, designed to get you to click on them.

Disguised ads have been around for as long as we can remember; they aren’t limited to the web. For example, some credit card statements boast a 0% balance transfer but don’t make it clear that the percentage will shoot up to a much higher number unless the user navigates a long term agreement in tiny print.

On the web, they are just as sneaky. Let’s take a look at 2 examples.

CNN

At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be advertisements on this page. However, if you look closely you will see an advertisement that has been designed to blend into the content of the website. While it does have a label telling the user that this content is not provided by CNN it’s done in a way that most users will miss.

Let’s look at another.

Da Font

As designers, we come across this style of disguised advertisment frequently. Which one of these download buttons is real? Hard to tell, huh and when you click on the wrong one it’s extremely frustrating.

While there are no ethical guidelines that designers need to adhere to it’s our responsibility to make sure we are not using these tactics to trick users. You don’t enjoy being misled, and neither do they.