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Pop Ups and Pop Unders are Rude
by Enrique De
Argaez
I must confess, I am also guilty.
Way back in 2002 when I started this website I searched for ways
to build traffic. One of the options that was available and
seemed viable, at that time, was "exit popups". The technology
was advertised as focused toward the interest of the surfer. I
signed up for a free program, one of those that for every two
pop-unders shown on your page you earn one impression free on
another site.
Traffic increased and things worked fine for some time. However
the Internet changes a lot in a short time. The pop unders
started to get out of focus, to display bad content that annoyed
the site visitors, and the ads gradually became more
intrusive.
The reaction from the Internet users was to complain and to
avoid the sites with popups, pop-unders, and such sort of things.
Taking my visitors advice, I removed all the pop-unders from my
sites, very fearful of loosing all the traffic I was getting from
that advertising strategy.
An amazing thing happened. Traffic dipped a little bit in the
beginning but after a couple of weeks, again traffic started to
increase slowly but surely. Today I am glad of my decision
because there are many tools to block popups, making them
useless, and my website visitors don't have to suffer those
intrusive popups and pop-unders any more.
Today it is very clear to me that all webmasters have to have
good manners and to take care of not being rude with their
website visitors.
Yahoo and Google have pop-up and pop-under ads blockers. So do
AOL and EarthLink. Firefox, the new popular web browser from
Mozilla, has a built-in pop-up ad suppresser. Even Microsoft
offers one in its Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Search the term "pop-up
blocker" and you'll find millions of results and hundreds -- if
not thousands -- of tools and services, with names like Pop-Up
Stopper, Pop Swatter, Pop This and Pop-Up Zapper. You can
download them for free in exchange for filling out consumer
surveys, participating in various data-mining schemes and
targeted ad campaigns, or by paying an annual fee for tech
support.
The reason pop-up blockers are
so popular is, of course, because pop-ups (and pop-unders) are so
unpopular. Many studies conducted surveying Internet surfers have
found that almost 80 percent of people surveyed had a "very
negative" opinion of pop-up ads. They hijack your screens, often
touting products and services that bear little relation to the
content you are viewing. One second you're reading an article
about the subject you enjoy and the next moment a digital
billboard from Orbitz ("Put a thousand miles between you and your
next meeting") or Trade-In-Value.com ("What's your car worth?")
popups.
In a sense, in-your-face ads
like these are the browser equivalent of e-mail spam. But
advertisers will tell you the reason you see so many of them is
because they work. Since pop-ups and pop-unders are so cheap, you
only need a small fraction of clickthroughs to earn back your
investment. Of course, even this is debatable, and sites that
deploy them may be risking reader loyalty.
We experimented with pop-under
ads for a while. Our visitors hated them. After removing them our
traffic stats suggested that the popups were not helping much in
drawing targeted traffic to our websites. Visitors were less
likely to explore the site upon a first visit if they got hit
with a pop-under when they arrived. Since our goal is to get new
users to explore our site and invite them to look around, clearly
this wasn't good.
Another study in the UK found
that half of the pop-up ads were
closed before they had a chance to fully materialize, and 35
percent of ads were ignored altogether. Users saw the company's
name or logo in only 2 percent of the ads. The bottom line: Test
subjects indicated "a strong and intense dislike for pop-up ads,
resulting in a negative attitude toward the website itself and
the brand owner."
Although the sample size
involved in these two surveys was too small to take as gospel,
the results aren't surprising.
A few years back a horrible
program called Gator appeared in the Internet and with sly
tricks and false promises of faster web surfing talked people
into downloading its program. After that you got tons of ads
popping up as you navigated. Well, the gator lizard has come back
again under a new name. Its now called Claria and offers
behavioral marketing. They spy on you and then feed you pop-up
advertising that is supposed to be selected according to your
needs, and preferences, according to your online behavior. This
is the most intrusive and abusive advertising you can get. It is
a sure way to get me to click away from that website or that page
fast. In my opinion Pop-ups are the equivalent to email
spam.
Thankfully the reign of the
much-maligned pop-up ad may be coming to an end. I myself resent the intrusive
pop-ups and pop-unders, and consider them rude and bad manners. I
now surf much faster and pop-under free with my new Firefox browser. In case you prefer the Internet Explorer for
browsing, be sure to download the free Google Tool Bar and activate the pop-up blocking feature. Pop-ups
may rest in peace. Amen.
About the Author:
Enrique de Argaez is the webmaster of several
multilingual Internet websites and author of four newsletters. He
is active in Internet World Marketing, and Internet Market
Research. Visit his main English website at http://www.internetworldstats.com
.
