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Pop-Up Ads Begin To Face Serious Opposition

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fighting-back dept.

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.

6 of 428 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Where are those popups everybody seems so angry about? Haven't advertisers stopped using them around the time Mozilla was released?

  2. Pop-up ads don't bother me so much... by httpamphibio.us · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But what I do get annoyed with are pop-up ads that pop-up new ads when you close them, pages that automatically ask you if you want to install "useful" spyware, and pop-up generators. Another sort of ad that I've just started seeing proliferate are the ones that pop up in their own window that doesn't seem to be a browser window, no status bar, no scroll bar, no file/edit/etc, no max/min/close. The only way I've found to close these is by ctrl-alt-del'ing (sorry I use W2K :) ). It's a good thing companies are getting wise to how annoying these are though. Good stuff...

    --
    sig.
  3. Fighting back by AtariKee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some sites have begun fighting back against anti-popup software. There is now anti-anti-ad software. A good example of this script is here.

    --
    "You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
    "Thank you, Master Control"
    -Sark and the MCP
  4. The irony is... by teamhasnoi · · Score: 5, Funny

    AOL has crafted a special pop-up ad to let you know of their new commitment to customer satisfaction!

  5. Popup Ads Don't Bother Me At All by FreeUser · · Score: 5, Informative
    Popup ads do not bother me at all.

    Why? Because I use mozilla exclusively, and have turned off javascript's ability to
    • open unrequested windows
    • move or resize existing windows
    • raise or lower windows
    • hide the status bar
    Any site I hit that says something asinine like "best viewed with Internet Explorer gets an email from me explaining why I will never bother to use their site, and (in the vast majority of cases, where I find a competitor that does adhere to standards), why I have gone to their competitor instead despite having found their page first.

    I keep a template of the email handy, so that only a few seconds are required to make the complaint to both the webmaster AND two others who are as high up in the firm as I can discover in a quick web search.

    These sites are few and far between ... mozilla works for the vast, vast majority of sites I visit, use, and make purchases from, but for those few who don't the one or two minutes required to fire off a polite, accurate, and pointed complaint is well worth it ... no one likes losing business, least of all smaller firms trying to get started and unwittingly losing 10-30% of their market (depending on whom you ask) because of Microsoft's deliberate incompatability games. Indeed, the number of heartfelt thank you's (and subsequently fixed sites, many of which have switched to some version of apache) I've received has been a very pleasant surprise.

    In any event, there is absolutely no reason for one's web browsing experience to be the kind of popup hell described here ... a small modicum of knowledge and willingness to stand out from the herd is all that is required.
    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  6. Mozilla has saved me thousands! Yes - really.... by mccalli · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Any site I hit that says something asinine like "best viewed with Internet Explorer gets an email from me explaining why I will never bother to use their site, and (in the vast majority of cases, where I find a competitor that does adhere to standards), why I have gone to their competitor instead despite having found their page first.

    Funny you should mention that.

    I currently have a bank account with NatWest. After they 'upgraded' their site, and .asp's started appearing instead of .jsp's, it became impossible to use their online banking unless you used Internet Explorer.

    Annoyed, I decided to hunt out alternatives and found Intelligent Finance, which works fine with Mozilla.

    Of course, as well as working fine with Mozilla it also happens to have a drastically better mortgage than the Natwest one I currently have, and I am right now in the process of moving my mortgage over. I am saving, literally, thousands of pounds.

    So...Natwest annoying me with locked-in pages lead to me going investigating competitors, which in turns lead me to switch away from Natwest completely.

    Consumer preferences in action.

    Cheers,
    Ian