The Truth About Pop-ups

Unless you`ve been living in a cave during the Internet revolution, you`ve no doubt encountered pop-ups.What are pop-ups?Pop-up ads or pop-ups are a form of online advertising intended to increase web traffic or capture email addresses. Here`s how pop-ups work:When certain web sites open a new web browser window to display advertisements, the pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript, but can be generated by other means as well.A variation on the pop-up window is the pop-under advertisement. This opens a new browser window, behind the active window. Pop-unders are less intrusive, and are not seen until the desired windows are closed, making it more difficult for the Internet user to determine which website opened them.How did pop-ups originate?In the early days of the World Wide Web, banner ads were the most popular revenue generators. However, in the wake of the dot-com crash, prices paid for banner advertising click-thru`s plummeted and banner advertising lost most of its appeal and effectiveness. As a result, many marketers began to investigate more effective advertising methods. Pop-up ads by their very nature are difficult to ignore or overlook. In fact, pop-up ads are much more effective than the original banner ads - up to a 15% click-thru rate, compared to .3% for banner ads. Even pop-under ads have a click-thru rate of 6.5% (Source: New Architect, Feb. 2003).However, all of the economic advantages of using pop-ups notwithstanding, I personally refuse to use pop-ups on my website.Why? Two reasons:1. Just because a marketing method is proven to be effective, doesn`t mean I should necessarily use it. I also have a moral obligation not to do anything to annoy visitors to my website, and pop-ups are clearly annoying to many people.2. I hate pop-ups. I think they`re both annoying and intrusive. I also think businesses that use pop-ups are exhibiting a blatant disregard towards the very people they depend on for their livelihood.Besides that, the number of people whom don`t like pop-ups is too large ignore in my opinion.This is evidenced by the huge number of pop-up blockers available both commercially and for free.In addition, many of these types of ads have scripts in them that can crash browsers.Can pop-ups be effectively blocked?Unfortunately, the DHTML approach of creating pop-ups is harder to block than the pure Javascript method, as DHTML is an integral part of a modern web-browser. However, even DHTML pop-ups are blockable.One of the best and most popular ways to block pop-ups is to use an add-in toolbar for Internet Explorer for Windows. The Internet Explorer 7 (with Windows XP SP2), Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera and Safari browsers all have built-in pop-up blockers.In closing, first impressions are everything.. Don`t jeopardize potential sales by using tricks, gimmicks or tactics that will anger, frustrate or insult potential customers. In the end, it`s just not worth it!
Dale KingDKing2007-6-18 18:52:36