2trew: An advertiser who uses popups with 19 flashing colors on my computer proves he doesn’t know his audience. As I’m severely colorblind, that’s pretty much a waste of his time AND MY RESOURCES.
Harry: Good on you. I’ll be moved to elevate that to “great on you” if you let your opinions on this issue known at whatever conferences/conventions you attend.
mske said:
Then, again, you aren’t complaining about pop-ups – you’re complaining about those that pop all the time, which is quite a different subject. Most services allow the webmaster to choose how often a new pop will pop.
Aslan2 said:
Which means the ad has taken up all of your screen. You can click on a pop ad to make it go away – how is that more difficult than clicking on a remote to change the channel?
Which means the ad covered the entire page. Again, is turning the page so much easier than clicking the little “x” on an ad?
So why do you let it? I click the “close” button on ads before they have a chance to fully load.
Nor do most pop ads.
Gee, that’s great. But as I’ve already discussed, banner ads don’t pay very well for precisely the reason that they are very easy to ignore.
Are people reading this thread before posting? Because I keep seeing the same arguments that I have already addressed.
Well, finally a new one:
Harry Mudd said:
The fact remains that some people hate them. Maybe even many. But I feel the need to remind people that I have gotten more complaints over flashing banner ads than I have ever gotten over pops. Maybe people who don’t like pops just leave my site and never come back. But if so, they sure don’t seem to be affecting the number of hits I get.
Then you should write a book and sell it. I know of nobody who can survive with two full-time salaries on 4000 visits a day. Seriously.
I have been looking for sponsors for quite some time. So have many other people I know. Nobody has gotten them. Now maybe it’s because my sites are in the entertainment field and there seems to be an advertising bias of some sort against entertainment sites. I don’t know. But I can tell you that I would gladly drop pops if I could find another way to support the site and earn the same amount. The fact of the matter remains that it is the only way to do it.
David B–
A webmaster of a site I no longer visit once said that if you use a popup killer while browsing his site you are illegally viewing the content of that site, since profits from the popups help keep the site running. As someone who utilizes popups on their own sites how do you feel about that statement?
I think that webmaster is an idiot. If people want to use pop-up blockers, that’s their choice. Hell, a couple of my WRITERS use 'em. And if pop-up blockers become prevalent, advertisers will find new ways around 'em. <shrug>
Bandwidth is measured by volume of data by period of time. Any data that I did not request that comes down my modem line is slowing the transfer of everything else. That takes time. My time. My time has a value. I call that stealing my bandwidth.
If you’re not paying for the bandwidth, than somebody else can’t be “stealing” it. You want to say they’re taking up your time, but that’s about it. And I have doubts about that as well since you should be perfectly able to close the new window.
What? You will have to explain this one to me again. A pop-up ad can only happen once to be considered a pop-up ad? If a pop-up ad pops up more than once, it is something else?
No, but you need to be more specific. It’s like if I were to complain about cars and say that I’m complaining because of the red cars. In that case, I’m not really complaining about cars per se, but about a specific type of car.
So in your case, you apparently aren’t complaining about pops per se, but about specific types of pops which do other things.
Just trying to keep focused.
Perhaps a little off topic, but an advertising model that I haven’t seen before that I actually like on the Internet is being used now at Salon.com.
A while ago they switched to a subscriber system and I thought that would be the end of Salon for me, since I hate to pay for anything. But I recently returned and saw that they’ve implemented a system where you can choose to view an online ad for one of their sponsors at which point you’re given a free day pass for all the premium content on the site.
I don’t know if this is a profitable model for them, but I hope it is, because I really like it and would use it on other pay sites, too.
PS I also hate popups.
I think that one big issue at hand here is that (for the most part) people are paying for their Internet access. This is different than TV (I will talk about cable in a bit).
With TV, assuming a halfway decent antenna of some sort, you are not paying for anything but the equipment. Part of the tradeoff here, because it is free, is that we put up with commercials. But wait Binarydrone, you say, what about cable? It has ads, doesn’t it?
Granted but (and please bear in mind that I have not actually had cable for a while now), as memory serves cable is basically either broadcast channels from farther away than you could pull with an aerial, or so-called premium channels that have far less advertising.
So, I think that what sticks in many people’s craw is that “The Internet” seems to be trying to have things both ways, I am paying to get on line, and am still subjugated to ads. This makes some folks wonder what they are paying for.
Even then, it would probably not be too terrible if some small effort were made to make the adds appropriate to the site that one is visiting (in the same way that television commercials have some demographic targeting (i.e. detergent commercials during soap operas, beer commercials during football games and the like)). A lot of the problem that I have is that the ad itself can be rather offensive (or at least I could see how it would be to some), when the site that I am visiting is completely vanilla.
Just some thoughts.
The theory behind a pop-up ad is something I have no problem with. I understand the need to advertise.
But when we have multiple pop-up ads, constantly recurring on a website, then I have a problem. As I said before:
So I visit a site. A pop-up comes up. I close it. I read the first page and find the link to the specific information that I want. I click the link, and both the new page and the pop-up come up. But I have already acknowledged the advertisement and decided that it did not interest me. 20 seconds later will not change my mind. So I close the pop-up again and read the page, only to find that it was not the page I wanted. I click on the “Back” button, and back comes the pop-up. Etc.
This is what I do not enjoy about pop-ups. I acknowledge the ad. I’ve processed the information that it gave me and rejected acting on it. All I want now is some peace and quiet to enjoy the website.
And I think it is admirable that you David B use the feature that limits the pop-ups. But I would argue that you are in the minority on that. Pages that breed pop-ups are common. It is that usage that “ruins” pop-ups for everyone.
As I say, in theory I have no problems with pop-up ads. But just like a college degree, there is a world of difference between theory and reality.
I am paying for my bandwidth, I just happen to be buying it in bulk. When I pay my $22 a month, I expect to be able to pull down 118,540,800 kilobits of data for that 28 day period (assuming a 49k connection on my dialup).
Just because I haven’t ever attempted to maximize my bandwidth usasge for 24/7 for an entire month, doesn’t mean I willingly wave my right to maximize my bandwidth usage over a shorter period of time, by bringing down content that is meaningful and enjoyable to me.
Where said “theft” comes in, is when a content provider inisists on sending down content that is the antithesis of enjoyable merely because I access content that I’m seeking out. The 5 seconds worth of bandwith usage spent pulling down a popup ad is 5 seconds longer that I have to wait for the download of the latest quake mod I’ve had running in the background while I surf.
Should I be forbidden to begrudge the popup-using site’s webmaster those 5 seconds, merely because of the fact that I only utilize a small portion of the bandwidth that I purchase every month? I don’t think so. Like many people, I value my time. Using the compensation my employer pays me for my time as a guideline, those 5 seconds are worth 2.5 cents to me, so I’m certainly going to put my two cents in when it comes to expressing how I feel about it.
I realize I have a choice to seek out alternate content from providers who don’t use popups, and I exercise that choice often.
There’s something I should have made clear in my post and I apologise for not doing so: One of our sites is a well-targeted, near-monopoly in an industry with very high product value. We can therefore command very good prices for sponsorship. I realise that this happy situation only applies to a small number of site owners. Having said that, I can still only attribute about a third of our total income to this situation.
The breakthrough for us was moving away from the classical “more hits = more income” way of thinking, when this model when collapsed a few years ago. Instead of looking for more advertisers or going with the latest trends in advertising, we took a step backwards. We now break all the rules, e.g.:
It’s also important to look at other income streams. For example, people’s attitudes about paying are changing. Three years ago our visitors scoffed at our paid membership idea. These days we sign up at least one new member each week. We expect this part of our income to keep increasing.
As a side note David, our busiest site is a message forum. We decided to make extra features available to paid members, e.g. the ability to include text formatting, images, etc. It was an instant hit and really helped kick-start our membership programme.
Our total income breakdown looks (very) roughly like this:
Sponsorship: 60%
Merchandise & other sales: 20%
Membership: 10%
Misc services (classified ads etc): 5%
Banner ads: 5%
There’s something I should have made clear in my post and I apologise for not doing so: One of our sites is a well-targeted, near-monopoly in an industry with very high product value. We can therefore command very good prices for sponsorship. I realise that this happy situation only applies to a small number of site owners. Having said that, I can still only attribute about a third of our total income to this situation.
The breakthrough for us was moving away from the classical “more hits = more income” way of thinking, when this model when collapsed a few years ago. Instead of looking for more advertisers or going with the latest trends in advertising, we took a step backwards. We now break all the rules, e.g.:
It’s also important to look at other income streams. For example, people’s attitudes about paying are changing. Three years ago our visitors scoffed at our paid membership idea. These days we sign up at least one new member each week. We expect this part of our income to keep increasing.
As a side note David, our busiest site is a message forum. We decided to make extra features available to paid members, e.g. the ability to include text formatting, images, etc. It was an instant hit and really helped kick-start our membership programme.
Our total income breakdown looks (very) roughly like this:
Sponsorship: 60%
Merchandise & other sales: 20%
Membership: 10%
Misc services (classified ads etc): 5%
Banner ads: 5%
I find it easier to ignore ads other than popups or popunders. Fair doesn’t have anything to do with it. To me, a popup feels like the equivalent of someone grabbing me by the lapels and yelling at me about there product. Other ads don’t engender such a negative feeling.
This discussion is moot.
The Proxomitron is a freeware local proxy/web filter which will allow you to supress pop-ups/pop-unders and similar phenomena.
Get back to business.
Fuji:
Along with myriad other popup killers available for free at download.com and the like…
mske: a question. Do you disallow cookies? I do know that even sites which limit popups (i.e. after you’ve seen it once you don’t get it again) can’t do so without setting a session cookie.
Many friends of mine who’ve complained about popup bombardment were blocking cookies and thus the site delivering the ads was not able to limit their popups. As soon as they enabled session cookies (i.e. cookies that go away when you close your browser) the bombardment stopped…
Just a thought.
Purd Werfect…
I have to echo David B here… Have you actually read the thread???
One of the key issues well-dicussed here already is that sites are moving away from other ads to popups precisely because they’re harder to ignore, therefore get more response, therefore can be charged for at a reasonable rate to support the site (as opposed to banners which won’t generate enough revenue to keep a site with 3 pages and 2 hits per day running on an old beat up 386…)
Harder to ignore is not more effective as an ad. If anything, it’s less effective. I may agree with someone easily, but if I decide to resist, I’ll resist with definite vigor.
The point I was argueing was one of fairness as called upon in the OP. Again, if advertisers are treated fair is irrelevant. The fact that they decide to go on the offensive strips them of the rights to be considered as an opponent which should be treated fair. If someone sets out to remove from me what I have, than unless they’re in the process of falling in love with me, than screw fairness.
Advertisers deserve any misery they get. (Aside from personal tragedies such as family members dying and such. Such tragedies transcend jobs.
The phrase “they’re harder to ignore” has popped up a couple of times now, and it’s sticking in my mind.
The actual process of forming coherent thoughts hasn’t started yet, but it makes me wonder.
Once I get past the “Fatal Attraction” replay, the first thing that my cynical side wants to know is how many of these additional hits are people who would have just failed to notice a banner ad and clicked to learn more about a product they were interested in and how many come as a result of people screwing up when they try to close the popup.
I think that may be a part of the general antipathy: you can’t simply ignore them, you have to take a direct action in order to get rid of them. Your television doesn’t get hung up on the last frame of an ad until you push a button on the remote.
I’m not trying to get involved in a debate about whether or how that makes popups different from any other kind of ad, I think that’s a waste of effort. There is, as is evinced by the fact that this thread exists, a dislike of popup ads. If we’re looking for the root of that dislike, it’s been articulated here by a lot of people. To seek to narrow the terms of the discussion to avoid deceptive ads, respawning popups, outright criminal scams, and the simple problem of seeing the same ad every time you return to an index page strikes me as sophistry: those experiences have become associated with the popup ad in the minds of a lot of people, and I doubt that there’s any way to change that. One of the qualities that seems to be inherent in the net is that it’s impossible to regulate. Somebody is always going to seek to use those methods to beat the ethical advertisers out of money. People are going to keep being exposed to these problems, and rightly or wrongly associate them with popups.
To argue with people who think this way is futile. Advertising has to work with the preconceived notions, prejudices, and habits of the consumer. Apparently, using hot babes to sell sports cars works. Using ugly men doesn’t. To launch a campaign using ugly men and then spend a great deal of time trying to convince the buying public that it should work, that these men are professional mechanics and Formula 1 drivers and by God know their sports cars, seems like a bad idea.
I’d like to see the figures on purchases as opposed to simple clicks. This is not the concern of most websites, but it is going to shape the future of internet advertising. Whatever effort gets put into spending the budget by the ad wizards, the budget comes from the producers of the actual product. A million clicks and no sales isn’t a good statistic from their point of view, it’s an expensive one.
Popups. Popup blockers. I don’t think that this has rendered the discussion moot in any way. There’s ample precedent through human history. New locks are upickable until new picks are made. New armour makes weapons obsolete until somebody comes up with a better weapon. Most of the spam I get now seems to have been designed less to sell me something than to get through my spam filters.
I’m rambling, and getting a bit cosmic, but I’m back now to “harder to ignore”. While I was thinking about this post (yeah, I know, I didn’t say it was quality thought, but there was some, honest) I realized that I haven’t really seen a popup in a long time. I may have a general idea of what it showed, but I certainly haven’t read any text. As soon as I see the toolbar activate, my attention goes down there to close the ad.
That’s a reflex I developed as a result of meeting several ads that didn’t have the same idea I did as to what the “x” in the upper right corner was to mean.
When I get so good at that that I can close them before I see them at all, will the advertising start to go on the toolbar because that’s harder to ignore?
This is where the rant would start, I suspect, and out of respect for the forum I’ll just stop now.