The gurus keep telling us to get real and drive traffic to our websites via search engines, articles, blogs and a multitude of automated avenues that place cash in their bank accounts . Very few of them will recommend traffic exchanges (unless they happen to own one).But the truth is, many hundreds of thousands of people DO use traffic exchanges.

Those hundreds of thousands of people represent millions of dollars. Another truth, is that whilst the gurus may not recommend traffic exchanges, they use them all the time to grab business from the millions of surfers looking for internet success.

For these sufers, multiple pop-ups, pop-unders and time sucking image loading has been an issue they have had to live with in exchange for a bit of web traffic. Now they have something much worse to contend with. THE DREADED NEW VIDEO STREAMING CRAZE!

Traffic exchanges are backing up to the first off-ramp with video streaming splash pages. The gurus tell us this is the next best thing since the solar system was invented. Perhaps, from their point of view, this is correct. Long-suffering exchange surfers have to sit jammed up on their websites for an eternal age whilst the video loads. Of course, this extends the time the viewer sits on the page, which extends the time she has to decide to click in and become a capture.

However, I declare with joy in my heart, that a recent niche market poll that I conducted revealed I am not the only surfer in the world who hates video streaming. There is a lot of frustration out there in the surfers world. Possibly there are smashed computors,mangled modems and exploding blood vessels too.

Being hung up on some hard-sell splash page whilst a video nobody wants to watch is loading, is rage inducing to the point of not just clicking away, but also closing down the browser and taking taking the dog for a walk on a tranquil beach.

Video streaming is being marketed as the Marketing tool of the century, but if it is enraging potential customers, I fail to see the point in it. After all, it is the year 2006. TV and video was not invented last week. Animated footage is so old hat, we yawn through the Breaking news, so how to they expect us to grow breathless with excitement when we are forced to watch a video of a bank balance growing? Especially when it is not even MY bank balance!

If you really feel you do have to use viseo streaming, despite this very negative poll feedback, take this into consideration :

* Not everyone in the world has broadband.
* There is still a relatively large consumer base out there still running on dial-up.
* Even if only 5 percent of surfers were still on dial up, that adds up to a huge loss of potential profits for the simple fact is, video streaming on dial up is a special kind of hell that only mass murderers deserve!
* Not one dial up customer in my poll had ever waited for the program to load. 100 percent of them shut down their browsers rather than die of old age whilst the streaming loaded.
* That is 100% of 5 percent of the internet market you just lost!

If you have been using a lot of video streaming in your marketing , stick your head out the window for moment. What is that sound in the distance? I hope you can hear it. I think it is the sound of a giant congregation of angry surfers praying that your business busts!