Commentary: Pop-up ads: Love 'em, hate em and use

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Aug 26, 2002 by Special to The Daily Record

Pop-up ads might be considered the equivalent of the television commercial: Both interrupt your interactive experience. But it is through these vehicles and the ad revenue they generate that we enjoy the continuation of free programming and content.

Why then do people react so strongly against pop-up ads (more so than television ads), what are Internet users doing about pop-ups, and what impact are these reactions going to have on we Internet marketers? Recent action by large ISPs and Web publishers has renewed controversy. Let's explore it now.

Pop-ups proven past

According to report from Statistical Research Inc., pop-up Internet advertisements are 50 percent more likely to be noticed than banner ads, but they are 100 percent more likely to be considered intrusive by the viewer. That's quite a lot of unhappy people.

More recently, studies have shown that people are willing to tolerate pop-ups, but the problem is that few can tolerate the regular volume of pop-ups they are shown. Still, many companies have seen increases in traffic and purchases as a result of targeted pop- up placement. Here's a small snapshot of past success stories:

In 2001, Half.com, a site owned by eBay, deployed a pop-up campaign on MyPoints and the New York Times Web sites. The campaign generated a 66 percent increase in Half.com's unique visitors from 5.8 million to 9.7 million, which subsequently caused eBay properties to shift from the number 12 most trafficked Web site to number eight.

In May 2001, Real.com Network ran a pop-up campaign that led to a 1 million increase in total unique visitors, a 17 percent jump in traffic.

Pop-ups also work in the collection of e-mail addresses. Internet Retailer magazine recounts the success of one automotive company that increased its customer e-mail address database from 76,000 to 800,000 by using a pop-up on its own Web site.

The backlash

Despite their success, pop-ups (and their brother, pop-unders) seem to have left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths (some marketers, too). The reason is that though there are good pop-ups on the Web, there are far too many bad ones (X-10 camera, anyone?). Users have grown used to clicking the pop-up box closed before it even loads. Truly annoyed users may have even installed a pop-up ad suppressor program on their computer or let their disdain be known to their favorite sites. The results are having a direct impact on Web publishers and their bottom lines.

Some ISP's such as Earthlink have announced that they will now block pop-up ads for their users. Women's Web site iVillage has announced it will no longer accept pop-up advertising on its site (although it still delivers its own pop-up windows). Could this backlash mean that pop-ups will soon go the way of the dodo bird? Will online marketers continue to want to risk the negative feedback while trying to employ a successfully proven tool?

Marketers' alternatives

If nothing else, the ever-changing moods and tolerances of online users have kept the ad creative people busy coming up with new and different ways to capture someone's attention. iVillage displays an interesting compromise kind of ad. On the bottom of its home page are small boxes of "partner" advertisers with the instructions, "roll over ads to expand." Mousing over the ads generates a kind of pop-up ad -- the difference is that the user controls whether she sees the ad or not.

Another company called iLor has introduced a "banner console" which allows users the ability to save an ad if it interests them so they can interact with it at a later point, instead of being taken away from what they're doing. The key of both of these solutions is that control is given to the user and not the advertiser.

The other alternative is to take away all control from the user. There are some pop-up ads that simply cannot be closed and the user is forced to wait for the entire ad to end. Similarly, some Web publishers avoid pop-ups but use interim pages to force the user to watch an ad. An example of when an interim page would be used is between logging into a site and getting to your next destination page -- the interim page would be served before your log-in was completed.

Personally, I think forcing users to do anything is ultimately going to turn them off or turn them away. Giving users control may be more pleasing to them; however, is it more effective for the advertiser? The controversy rages on.

Hollis Thomases is president of WebAdvantage.net, a Web marketing company located in Owings Mills.