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iVillage Renounces Pop-up Advertising
ceejayoz writes "iVillage.com, a popular women's portal, announced today that it is getting rid of pop-up advertising on its site after a survey of their users found 95% considered it the most annoying part of the Internet. Lets hope they can prove there are other, less annoying advertising models that work!"
Lets hope they can prove there are other, less annoying advertising models that work
Do popups work?
This leads me to this: assuming that very few people even bother to look at the ads, there must exist some portion that do, or else they wouldn't still be around. My idea would be for websites to have ONE (and only one) browser popup when you first enter their website (either through front page or links). This Browser can contain multiple ads, say 5-10. You are then free to peruse these at your leisure, or you can can close it down and not have to worry about any more popping up, at least while your webbrowser remains. This way, ads can still be shown, but only once, which is much less annoying.
I don't care much for any type of advertising, but I'm willing to tolerate and accept it if its nonintrusive. A solitary banner ad at the top of the page is more or less expected at this point. I barely notice, and every once in a while I might even glance at it. A popup ad however annoys me before it even displays its contents. I'm already closing the window. I don't care what it says. I don't care how awesome the product might be. All I know is that its in the way. You lost me before you ever had a chance to tell me who you were or what you were about. In fact, blocking popups is easy. Certainly easier than blocking banner ads of multiple sizes. All I see of it is a waste of time. The internet newbies might pay attention for a little while before they figure it out. And the population of internet newbies is dwindling.
Targeted ads ala google make much more sense, especially with their low-key approach to it. First off, it will probably be for something I'm interested in, so even if its not in line for what I'm searching for, at least it won't annoy me. And secondly, I might actually click on it. I've clicked through on google's ads on several occasions, typically when I'm looking for prices on things. The advertising actually serves a somewhat useful purpose. Imagine that. The popup advertisers need to figure this out. Before the existance of those ads is the reason people stop visiting certain sites.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I'm amazed at the resistance I get... I think it's time to start the 'campaign to disable javascript everywhere'. Javascript is EVIL. It's like a C++ compiler on your local machine, accessible to anyone who's sites you visit. The only thing they've done is remove those functions that outright allow damage to be done. But every day, another insecure javascript feature is found, just recently Internet Explorer and Opera were found vulnerable to the same javscript bug.
What does it take to convince people? If you disable javascript, you will not longer have popup ads, no more cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, no more security exploits (we've been lucky that nobody really attempts tp exploit them, we talk about windows boxes having exploits, but all machines are vulnerable to javascript), and more.
So please, disable javascript. You can still use almost all sites without it. It will make you more secure, and have a much happier browsing experience.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I learned to mentally tune out web ads a long time ago (then I learned to tune them out with software). Same with magazines, to a certain extent. Though usually in a magazine I read it several times and catch more of the ads as I re-read it, which is impossible with rotating web ads. If the ad doesn't look like the content I'm expecting (for instance plain black and white text), or if it changes everytime I go to the same page, I don't see it.
Plus, I'd be afraid to click on them for fear of being tracked, or fear of "losing my place" in the page I'm surfing. I think if I saw an ad for something I wanted on the internet, at best I'd write down the URL and visit the main site later.
And pop-up ads are easy to ignore.. as soon a new small window appears while surfing, I close it. Sometimes I close a window that has some important information in it (like when logging into E*TRADE and they have information about a promotion or my account), but that's a small price to pay.
The best ads are the ones that are basically part of the content. Google, in other words... with Google I'm looking for something, so finding an ad about it can be helpful. And since they are all in the same textual format, they are easy to visually scan.
If I was reading /. and a small, static, textual ad appeared related to the article, I'd probably click on it. Any other ad is a complete waste of my screen.
Lets hope they can prove there are other, less annoying advertising models that work!
I've found in most any form of advertising that a quality ad draws more attention than an obnoxious ad. Perhaps more companies should turn to real advertising agencies for their web banners, rather than letting their make-shift inhouse marketing departments hack away at some animated gifs.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
...is being the one who has to pay for the content.
bart
Just because the bubble burst doesn't mean a lesson was learned.
Actually, read 'The Tipping Point'. Its a book on behavior of people, and it ties in closely with advertising and marketing. Word of mouth AND having a good product (for the companies selling the product, not those trying to sell popups), are good and effective forms of advertisment.
You telling someone that Alienware computers are the best things have you have ever touched, and that linux rocks- does alot more for the products than banners and popups that say "BUY ALIENWARE NOW!!!" or "LINUX ROCKS YOUR BOX".
Seriously, were you drawn to Linux or slashdot because of a popup? Or was it because of talking to people and because they in all seriousness are awesome products and services?
Word of mouth is advertising, and it can be done actively. Giving employees the product for free (if it's highly visable or catchy), will get them to tell others about it and for others to see the benefits. Think Cable ISPs, when they started (and now), most of them gave their service free to their employees. Do you think that this lost them money? No, it gave them money, because all their friends saw how much it rocked their 56K modems, and got it ASAP. They didn't need popups, banner or spam to do it- an awesome product and hearing it from someone else is advertisment in itself
Now this doesn't make iVillage money, but why did they need such agressive advertising in the first place. I personally wouldn't serve though them anyway. I would probably go through someone that I would pay some sum of money a month to host, rather than having banners. In addition, if you are paying for it, they will probably support you better- ever tried to call Geocities about scripting problems on their server, or asking them if they would update to Perl 5.6?
Tibbon
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