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Pop-Up Ads Begin To Face Serious Opposition
guttentag writes "The New York Times is running an article that looks at the ways AOL is trying to reinvent itself. Apparently, as customers began terminating their accounts and revenue dropped, AOL tried to make up the lost revenue by increasing the frequency of its popup ads. But the level of consumer satisfaction just seemed to plummet, so AOL's president formed a task force to study the problem. It found that focus group satisfaction went up "notably" when the number of popups was cut in half. As a result, AOL has scaled back (but not eliminated) the popups and it says this has been a catalyst for revolution within the company." Combine this with the recent announcement from iVillage and who knows - maybe more content providers will see the light - the light that readers don't like to be forcibly diverted from what they are doing.
What? You didn't think I was serious?
So... pop-up ads aren't annoying? Why didn't somebody say this before I bought all that usefull stuff?
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Where are those popups everybody seems so angry about? Haven't advertisers stopped using them around the time Mozilla was released?
... they would have found that 73% prefer to have pop-up ads without AoL.
--- What?
It is sad times indeed when our youth can't maintain a train of thought long enough to finish a haiku. In the spirit of setting a good example, I offer this final line: AOL is broke.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
So I wonder if AOL will do a focus group to figure out if cooking their books creates investor dissatisfaction.
I recently read an article that described AOL's concern for the customer experience as "Soviet". I think that bashing the Reds this way is kind of unfair.
AOL has crafted a special pop-up ad to let you know of their new commitment to customer satisfaction!
They just figured out that purposely interrupting a user's reading/viewing is annoying?!?
I suppose their next revelation will be that users don't like swift kicks to their nuts, either.
I hate AOL more than I can express in words. I would have to compose a song or paint something to adequately show my loathing for them.
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Ugh. Sounds like a great reason to stay off AOL at all costs.
What, you don't have enough reasons already?
As usual, they paid a hell of a lot of money to learn something that any random person would have told them for free. Someone once said that a million monkeys sitting at a million typewriters would eventually compose the collected works of Shakespear. We have now learned that this is not correct, a million monkees at a million keyboards will eventually form the most popular ISP in the US.