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

I guess this proves it

[RumGunner]

The administrators of women's websites really ARE smarter than the administrators of men's websites.

.

No Pop-Ups, but Pop-Under?!

[yorick]

From the article:

"Instead, the company will focus on alternative ad formats, including variably sized standard ad units and pop-under ads, as well as ad placements in newsletters and member mailings."

So instead they're sending you physical junk-mail or having pop-unders. That's a big improvement.

popups are annoying

[Vicegrip]

In fact, managing windows in general is annoying. Popups are also a bad idea because users now have (at least for people using mozilla) the ability to block them easily.

I personally think the best compromise is the large box at the beginning of the story approach: you have to look at it, but since the article wraps around it, the feel is akin to reading a magazine page.

A well targetted add like that gets my attention and often a click-through.

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:popups are annoying

[KuRL]

Television advertising companies have known about things like this forever -- that's why many commercials employ the same devices as the shows they interrupt and why some stations (read: MTV) make there programming look a lot like commercials (fast cuts; bright colors; constant, catchy background music; etc.).

iVillage.com = internet?

[Jonny Ringo]

their users found 95% considered it the most annoying part of the Internet.

Man, no wonder there doesn't seem to be any women on /. . Apperently they are all haning out at iVillage thinking its the internet. :-)

Cruel irony.

[halftrack]

Where does user surveys often appear? In pop-ups.

Mozilla!

[-tji]

This used to be the most annoying aspect of Internet browsing for me. But, since converting to Mozilla, it's a non-factor. No more popups!

To disable popups & other annoyances:

Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Scripts & Windows

de-select: Open Unrequested Windows, Move or Resize Windows, & Raise or Lower Windows

This feature, along with Tabbed browsing, are the web browser killer features.

Advertising

[Restil]

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

Disable Javascript

[evilviper]

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.

use mozilla

[ragnar]

In reality, there aren't that many javascript exploits occuring these days. There are many very useful features of JavaScript. Sure, I could live without it, but my solution is to use Mozilla. By doing this I prevent sites from opening windows and doing other nasty things.

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.