Anecdotally speaking, in-text ads tend to rank pretty highly on most users’ personal “annoyance meter.” But Vibrant Media, which provides some of those nettlesome rollover ads, is beta testing a new service that will show additional links to other related articles, music and videos on a site a user is already on. The New York company plans to test its Vibrant Related Content service with about 3,500 web publishers. As for the irritation factor users complain about, Vibrant suggests that users actually appreciate it. The closest evidence Vibrant offers to back up its argument is a Feb. 2008 report, Not quite the average: An empirical study of web use (account req.), that claims “link-following” is the primary driver navigation action, accounting for about 45 percent of all page transitions. Of course, that doesn’t mean that in most cases, users sought out additional links, as opposed to having them pop-up automatically when reading a piece of content. Release