“Ask a hundred Web surfers if they like popup ads, and I'm sure the overall response will be to the negative. Popup advertising has been one of the more maligned aspects of cruising the Web. Popups had their place, many merchants and advertisers have generated healthy revenue through this advertising medium, but it seems that the surfer has spoken and some very big names are listening.”
It seems Web site owners are as insensitive as ever to the impact on visitors of their presumptuous, intrusive, and frankly, badly designed advertising.
Ivo Vegter, contributor, ITWeb
Sadly, this report, written in 2002 by Michael Bloch, was a little premature. Popup advertising of the traditional kind may have declined, thanks to widespread use of popup blockers and vocal opposition from Internet users, but Web sites have long learnt that there are more sophisticated means of forcing unwanted advertising down the throat of their visitors. Some of them were previewed in Bloch's article. Others, like Javascript and Dynamic HTML, offer even newer ways of creating popups that are hard to suppress, in part because it is not always possible to tell whether a popup is an advert, or a necessary part of the user interface of a Web application.
Advertisers and Web site owners would do well to tread warily. Sure, it is hard to generate online advertising revenue, and innovation is often the only way to get a meaningful foot in the door. However, intrusive advertising is dangerous.
Alienating users might be a paying proposition in some cases, but it is only advisable if you have a monopoly hold or some other form of lock-in on them. If your users can easily surf over to the next site, which in some cases hosts exactly the same content - such as weather or wire news - your goal should be to attract them and make them come back, not to chase them away by being annoying and taking advantage of their presence with intrusive advertising.
In the last two days, I visited several sites recommended by people I follow Twitter, which dumped a huge big popup advert over their content. On a normal computer, this might have been no more than an irritation. It's easy to deal with: just click the close button (and perhaps add the site to your script-blocking blacklist).
However, on a mobile phone, these popups became insurmountable obstacles.
First, you have to scroll around the popup to find the close button. Then, you have to hit it. Accurately.
On one occasion, the intended tap on the tiny close button was interpreted as a hit on the advert, leading me off to the advertiser's site. Now I might have tried to return to the advertising site I had originally intended to visit, but when you're catching up with the news, can anyone really be bothered to jump through such hoops?
On another occasion, the popup was cleverly located relative to the screen edge. Clever, that is, if your screen is big enough to contain the entire popup. My mobile was not. As a result, scrolling to find a close button kept relocating the popup window. It became like that old Internet joke, in which you're asked to click a button which moves as soon as your mouse hovers over it. Not only was I unable to even see what the advert was for, but it was totally impossible to remove the popup and get to the underlying content.
If you're making it technically impossible to view your site, you're doing something wrong.
Both these Web sites lost business, although they'll surely pimp the visit and frantic activity as an interested customer to their advertisers.
I feel old just using the terms “popup advertising” and “popup blocker”. Do we really need to recruit a younger generation to revive the old campaign against popup advertising? It seems Web site owners are as insensitive as ever to the impact on visitors of their presumptuous, intrusive, and frankly, badly designed advertising.
Here's a tip: your visitors are doing you a favour. Their time and attention is valuable. Treat them like they're welcome, and you're honoured to show them your site. You wouldn't allow a physical billboard to cover or block the grand entrance of your bricks-and-mortar showroom, would you? Why do this with your Web site, then?
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