Intrusive Web Pop-ups Earn Their Keep
Industry experts say that intrusive web pop-up ads, which began appearing about a year ago, just as the advertising recession hit online publishers, are here to stay, mainly because they work. The ad format is now used by approximately 30 percent of the top 100 U.S. Web sites, according to a December study conducted by Cyveillance, a research firm that monitors online activity for corporations.
The NYTimes.com has been running pop-under advertising since last summer. “It’s become one of our more popular offerings [for advertisers],” says Craig Calder, vice president at New York Times Digital.
Consumer response rates to pop-ups or pop-unders can range anywhere from one percent to 15 percent depending on how targeted the campaign is, industry sources say. At Flipside Inc., which operates Traffic Marketplace, a pop-under ad network, an average of five percent of the people who see a pop-under from one of their clients click on the ad and sign up for a service or buy a product, said director of marketing Michael Streefland. That compares with a typical Web banner ad’s click-through rate of less than one percent.
Moderator Comment: As the trend to retailer-specific
marketing grows, should these plans include the use of pop-up/under co-op ads
with manufacturers on the retailer’s e-commerce site?
A new item has been added to the list of things you should
never speak about in polite company: politics, religion, money and now, pop-up/under
ads.
If you want an emotional response from your average everyday
web-surfer ask them how they feel about pop-up ads. The search engine, Google.com,
stopped running pop-up/under ads after it received numerous complaints from
users of its service. The complaints made Google’s technicians aware of a potentially
more serious problem. Other sites were using a stealth code to launch pop-ups
from Google’s pages. [George
Anderson – Moderator]