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!"

Comments

Internet advertising that works?

[Quixotic137]

Lets hope they can prove there are other, less annoying advertising models that work!

Is there any evidence that any Internet advertising works? As I type this I'm looking at a banner ad for NewsForge on Slashdot. OSDN advertising on OSDN. The popups of today are like the banners of two years ago. It seems like they should work, but they really don't.

Sympathy clicks?

[10 Speed]

Does anyone ever click through on an add (regardless of type or style) as a 'thank you' when they find a site they like, or usefull information?

assuming most advertising models reward for clicks...

Re:titsup.com

[ergo98]

Pop-up ads were a really bad idea since day one, and the net effect is that many people mentally associate "browsing the web" with a very bad experience. The short term gains of pop-up (or under) ads is very likely for little gain when all your users either go elsewhere, or just give up on looking up information on the net altogether (it's already started happening: The net became the "new TV" for a lot of people, but after months of frustration with bad connections, bad software, and hostile sites, many people went back to other forms of entertainment).

It's quite astounding that standard old-fashion "brand building" advertisements are so uncommon on the net: Where are the Coca Cola, Tums, Maxipad, and food commercials that fill the television airwaves? None of these commercials expect me to click on them and buy the product now.

If I had to pick the #1 best-done Internet advertisement ever, I would say that it was during "You Don't Know Jack - The Webshow" quite a few years back (man, that was a good 4 or 5 years ago). That really was revolutionary, and it really stuck certain names in my mind (such as Sketchers. I'd never heard of them before YDKJTWS).

Re:popups are annoying

[foobar104]

You're not the only one who ignores ads. A great paper was published in '98: Banner Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss "Obvious" Links. Excerpts:

None of the participants in the study had any trouble moving from the home page to the page containing this item, but to our surprise, when they reached the training page almost every participant scrolled past this "Internet Courses" link and selected a small link labeled "courses" from a menu at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, the information on Internet courses wasn't available there, and the participants were forced to give up on the task. When the facilitator directed them back to the earlier page and showed them banner-style link, most participants showed extreme surprise that they could have missed it.

Similarly, Spool, Scanlon, Schroeder, Snyder & DeAngelo (1997) noted that a participant in a usability test overlooked an animated banner containing the information she was looking for. It may be that people searching for specific information on the web tend to ignore large, colorful items that are clearly distinguished from other items on the page.

There's more than just anecdotal evidence, too. These guys actually performed a double-blind study in which they constructed special web pages that included both regular links and large, "banneresque" links. The data shows that the subjects found the regular links almost all the time (94%), but only found the banner-like links a just over half the time (58%).

The conclusion of the paper pretty much sums it up:

One item separated visually from everything else on a web page may be completely ignored by web searchers, even by searchers who are deliberately searching for the information provided in that item. Designers should be cautious about following guidelines stating that increasing the visual distinction between "important" items and other items is desirable; the visual distinctiveness may actually make important items seem unimportant.

Re:Better Advertising method....

[bilbobuggins]

ummm...

1) Have such good product that people will want it regardless (Assumes you don't have competition)

Good product should not be confused with only product. Oh, and I dare you to find anyone who would prefer a total lack of options to a little advertising (assuming they don't work for MS PR).

Or 2) Have such a good product that word of mouth spreads and people buy it

yep, cause that's sure been working for the Alpha, Mozilla and the *nix desktop so far...
Face it, no matter how annoying some advertising is - it's impossible for any company to achieve a decent amount of success without it. Advertising is a necessary evil and a major driving force in our economy which DOES work.
Ask yourself this: as annoyed as you might be, if you suddenly had a need for a tiny hidden camera... where would you go to buy it?

Re:popups are annoying

[Reziac]

This may be a good general observation -- something that is relatively oversized compared to what the user expects is likely to be missed. Frex, people will often read a small sign, but don't even see the billboard right next to it.

Re:It's obvious actually

[Reziac]

Actually, I'm much more likely to ignore a large ad -- the bigger the ad and the more of the page it takes up, the quicker I scroll past it looking for the content. Also, the more intrusive the ad, the more it's likely to impress me as bogus.

Whereas two-line text ads get my attention somewhere around half the time -- at least enough to skim the ad for content. If it looks interesting, I'm much more likely to follow it, and I tend to assume that a text ad is legit -- after all it wasn't shouting in my face like a snake-oil salesman.

Re:Disable Javascript -- hear hear!!

[Reziac]

I'm even more of a reprobate. I use an old browser (NS3.04) by *preference*, with images AND javascript turned off.. what's amazing is that (barring Stupid Navigation Tricks) 90% of the web works BETTER this way than with a modern and fully-loaded browser!

About a year ago there was an article in Web Techniques magazine (now retitled New Architect) which opined that js should NEVER be used except for cosmetic effect. The article also noted that about 30% of users either have js off by choice, or are behind corporate firewalls that strip js.
That's a helluva lot of potential customers to blow off just because one's webmaster is in love with js. B&M stores figure they can't afford to offend more than 5%.

Some facts

[aengblom]

Fact: I work at a MAJOR news web site

Fact: My company held off from pop-ups/flash until only recently

Fact: My company has spent and continues to lose millions

Fact: Numbers still continue to grow.

Fact: Pop ups don't drive readers away. Or the very least, drive away fewer than the pop ups are worth.

We hate them as much as the average user. NO we hate them more. (I WORK on a website which displays pop ups. Think about it.) Preview: Popup. Copy edit: Popup. Check out other departments work: Pop up. Pop up. Pop up.

It's not the web sites that need to change. It's the advertisers. Popups=revenues as long as advertisers think they do.

meanwhile. Just the other day on cbs.marketwatch I ran across a REAL VIDEO Ad. Wow.

Re:Better Advertising method....

[216pi]

it is very easy to buy ads on google. But 20$ on google brought less traffic to my site than a 10$ ad at K5.

but they seem to have missed the cause

[hawk]

It's not *just* the visual distinction, or the brightly colored flashing stuff.

People have *learned* that something meeting those criteria is an ad, and don't bother looking.

I don't block ads. I *do* block anything that blinks at me--the result being that I see very few ads.

hawk