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Stop with the pop-ups!
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February 12, 2002: 11:21 a.m. ET
Despite backlash, experts see continued use of pesky Web ads.
By Staff Writer Richard Richtmyer
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - They have become the bane of the Web surfer's existence, and every day there seems to be more of them.
Difficult economic times and a sharp decline in online advertising spending have led to a huge proliferation of so-called "pop-up" ads, which cause a new window to open up on the computer's desktop when a user either first opens or tries to close a Web page.
Whether they pop over, pop under, or even pop right into the Web page that spawned them, many Web surfers find them annoying and intrusive.
But industry experts say advertisers have found the ads to be more effective than the static banner ads that were commonplace through the late 1990s. And while they say they do not expect the use of pop-ups to diminish any time soon, they do expect them ultimately to take a different form.
"Rightly or wrongly, advertisers have concluded that a little rectangular banner is simply not intrusive enough, and it's too easy for consumers to just mentally block them out," said Jim Nail, an analyst at Forrester Research.
"And what we saw in 2001 was marketers cut back dramatically in online advertising," Nail added. "There were a number of responses to that, and one of them was pop-ups."
Over the past year or so, a delicate balancing act has been playing itself out in the marketplace. Internet publishers, starved for revenue, are scrambling to find new ways to court advertisers. Many of them have relaxed their standards, accepting pop-up ads where a year ago they would not have.
At the same time, Web surfers, who have become accustomed to an abundance of free, high-quality Internet content, have been barraged by pop-up ads, which without a broadband Internet connection and a high-end computer system often can slow a PC down to a crawl or even cause it to freeze.
Charlie Buchwalter, vice president of media research at Internet research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, said the exponential increase in pop-up advertisements may be the result of a "sense of exhilaration" on the part of advertisers who, after struggling to find an advertising model that works, may have done just that with pop-ups.
"Many of the advertisers that are employing pop-ups are really pleased with the response," Buchwalter said.
The right kind of brand awareness
Because of their in-your-face approach, so far, pop-up ads have been more effective in creating brand awareness than at generating "clickthroughs," which refers to sales derived specifically as a result of a user clicking on the advertisement. But Buchwalter warned that the overuse of pop-ups could leave an unintended impression on consumers.
"If people become more and more frustrated with pop-ups, there's going to be a negative brand impact on those advertisers that continue to march full-speed ahead in a way that they interfere with the users' experience on the Web," he said.
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If people become more and more frustrated with pop-ups, there's going to be a negative brand impact on those advertisers that continue to march full-speed ahead in a way that they interfere with the users' experience on the Web.
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Charlie Buchwalter
Jupiter Media Metrix |
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Of course, most Web surfers understand that advertising is what makes "free" Internet content possible. And marketing studies show that for the most part, users accept a sort of implicit contract with free sites where they will accept a certain level of advertising in exchange for the news and information.
But the idea of being forced to interact with an advertisement -- if not to just click on the "x" in the corner of the window to get rid of it -- apparently crosses a line with a lot of them.
"Goodbye, and good luck with your stupid and insulting ad campaign," wrote one CNN/Money reader who vowed never again to visit the site because he was angered by the pop-up ads offering a trial subscription to Money magazine, to which he claimed already to be a subscriber.
"If it doesn't stop, I'll go to a different home page and you're history," threatened another reader, who called the ads an invasion of his privacy.
Both readers also claimed to have been long-time visitors to the site.
Forrester's Nail said he expects this kind of controversy to linger throughout 2002 as Internet publishers continue to seek revenue from whatever sources are available. But ultimately, the consumer backlash will force the advertisers to adapt their methods to align more closely with what most consumers deem acceptable, he said.
"Publishers now really need revenue, and so they're going to push as far as they can until consumers push back and say 'Stop!'" Nail said. "That's where the self-correcting aspect of the market will bring things back into line, when they push things too far."
Although he said he does not expect pop-ups to disappear from Web advertising altogether, Nail said he does expect advertisers to become more innovative and eventually package and deliver them in a way consumers find less offensive.
Consumers can fire back
In the mean time, pop-up haters need not suffer in silence nor turn their backs defiantly on their favorite Web sites. And the tools they have at their disposal to take care of their pop-up problems may also force the kind of innovation Nail foresees.
With the proliferation of pop-up ads and the rising consumer discontent, a corresponding rise has occurred in the number of programs designed specifically to counteract them.
Upstart software maker Opera Software has built pop-up ad suppression features right into its Web browser, an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator. However, the new browser currently does not work with every Web site, since some developers have not yet embraced the product.
For users of IE and Netscape, there are many alternatives.
One of them is a program called Pop-Up Stopper, made by a company called Panicware. A fully functional free version is available for download, and a more feature-rich version is available for $19.95.
High-Density Software makes a program called PopNot, which is free to try for 10 days, and $12 if you decide to keep it.
Other pop-up suppression programs currently available include one from a German company called WebWasher, which it sells for $29, and a program called PopUpKiller, available from xFX JumpStart for $7.
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If enough consumers download these programs, then the marketers who are trying to use pop-ups to advertise will see that they are not able to serve any of them because they're being blocked, and then they'll try to find the next idea and tactic.
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Jim Nail
Forrester Research |
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"If enough consumers download these programs, then the marketers who are trying to use pop-ups to advertise will see that they are not able to serve any of them because they're being blocked, and then they'll try to find the next idea and tactic," Nail said.
Jupiter's Buchwalter pointed out that advertisers have more proven alternatives such as TV, radio and print, through which to reach consumers, making pop-up suppression programs a potential threat to a much-needed revenue stream for Web publishers.
"It's obviously a response to an outrage that many people feel," he said of the growing number and rising popularity of such programs.
"But the question is whether they're really going to catch on, and how is this going to dovetail with the fact that, if advertisers are discouraged from hawking their wares on the Web, that source of revenue support for the Web will ultimately go away," Buchwalter concluded. 
Click here to send mail to Richard Richtmyer
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