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Pop-Up Ads Lead to Consumer Revolt, Ad-Blocking
securitas writes "The New York Times' Saul Hansell reports on pop-up advertising and the consumer backlash against intrusive advertising. It's worth noting that pop-ups and pop-unders are the most effective, lucrative and annoying online advertising form. The article discusses the boom in ad-blocker software, with AOL, Yahoo and Google getting into the game. Microsoft says that it will include pop-up blocking in IE when it releases WinXP SP2. According to one pop-under ad agency, 20%-25% percent of Web users have pop-up blocking enabled, double the rate of a year ago - Earthlink's numbers bear that out, with 1 million of its 5 million customers using its ad-blocking software 18 months after release. DoubleClick says that it is 'developing technology that will enable pop-up ads to evade the blocking software.' Why isn't that surprising?"
Flashy, animated image ads on websites are just about as annoying about as much as pop-ups. Fortunately the Mozilla family of web browsers allows the user to block images from specific servers, which seems to work well in targeting ad-serving servers (doubleclick.com being one of the worst) yet leaving the ornamental graphics intact.
Thanks to this, I've pretty much squashed the "Get 1,000 Smileys Free" advertisements.
Now if there were only a way to block certain Flash advertisements and still be able to watch Strong Bad answering his e-mail.
I find it strange that companies like DoubleClick and X10 believe that advertising is most effective when maximally annoying. Google's advertising is a perfect example of how targeted advertising -- matching keywords to ads, tracking the effectiveness of ads, and showing ads where they are most effective -- can be quite profitable. And they're doing it with text-only ads, no flash, graphics taking over your entire screen, or pop ups.
At best, popup ads and other annoyances seems penny-wise and pound-foolish, sacrificing long-term customer satisfaction of the many who are subject to these ads and overall brand reputation for a potential short-term boost in sales from the few customers that do click through on annoying ads. For example, because I hate their ads so much, I would never buy any product from X10.
But I actually find Google's ads useful and click on them frequently because they're so well targeted to whatever I happen to be looking for. Targeted ads work. They show information or a product that's actually useful to me without getting in my way. Why do other advertisers continue to annoy customers with useless and irrelevant popup ads?
Doubleclick is attempting to evade the pop-up blockers? See, this is something that's always boggled my mind. People are using popup blockers because they don't want to receive popups. As such, they respond in a hostile manner to popup ads, and may more than likely be dissuaded from using any product advertised in such a fashion. The consumer, by using a blocker, is making a statement that they do not want to be advertised to in this way, that they find it intrusive, and that they will not respond to this form of advertising positively.
What makes these companies think that finding means to actively go against consumers' wishes will be an effective way to earn their business? It's like the do-not-call registry. If I opt to be put on the do-not-call list, that means I have no intention of buying anything from a telemarketer. As such, the companies are not losing any of my business because I was never going to give them my business in the first place. If anything, they're saving money by not having to waste the 15 seconds it takes to call me and find out I'm not interested.
Common sense, people...
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"-TMBG
...is the public's misconception about pop-up ads. Due to the slick marketing of AOL and Earthlink et al, when their screen becomes full of ads, they call up their internet service provider and give them tons of grief. I see my (less than savvy) friends pay fees to companies like AdsGone (i think it's $50/year to use the software) to get rid of "popups" by automatically closing them when they open.
But the other issue, is that 99% of the time when someone is getting the shit hammered out of them by popup ads it is because they've got about 15 parasites embedded into IE that sits and serves them all day.
True "pop up ads" only occur when you enter a site, or leave a site, and shouldn't just pop up spontaneously whenever the computer is on, regardless of whether or not you are on the inet. I've seen computers so laden with these that they are completely useless- you start the machine up, and it serves so many ads in the first minute that it crashes. But once again, the customers do not understand this, they simply blame their ISP.
Finally, the latest thing that i'm seeing (i work in tech support if you haven't figured this out yet)....
people will call up yelling and screaming and bitching and moaning about all these pop up ads they're getting. So i look at their computer and i start pointing to such things as Precision Time, or WeatherBug, or all these other "adware" programs they've installed as the culprit. They understand it when i tell them, but then i get things like "but i LIKE my Desktop Calender, i don't want you to remove it." or "but i LIKE my Huntbar." or "but i LIKE the MYWAY software, i want to keep it." and stuff. They will bitch about the ads, i tell them why they are getting them, but they don't want to fix it. However, this still doesn't stop them from calling up and bitching about the ads every other week.
It's a no-win situation for all concerned. I hate blanket statements, but the fact is, most of the people on the internet don't deserve to be there and will always be miserable, no matter how much you try to help them.
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