Imagine the scenario. You register for daily news updates from a work-related website in order to keep abreast of industry developments. You receive the first email bulletin, you read a headline and, interested, you click to find out more.
You are transported to the article page and what's the first thing you see... a pop-up ad covering the story you are trying to read. On this occasion the ad doesn't bother you too much so you simply close it down and read the story. The next time you see it you actually decide to respond to the ad and within days you find yourself a customer of the advertiser. Job done, action completed, end of story you would think -- but no.
In the weeks and months that follow you access the site almost every day and the same ad, offering you the same incredible deal, is served up to you (now a customer) again and again. With irritation levels through the roof you write a scathing email of complaint to the site editor.
As scenarios like this are played out on the web a thousand times a day by a thousand different users on a thousand different websites it is little wonder that there is a rising tide of ill-feeling towards pop-up advertising in the marketplace.
According to a report commissioned by the web behaviour firm Bunnyfoot Universality, 60% of web users mistrust "any company that uses -- or even hosts -- pop-ups". While most consumers understand and accept that some form of advertising is the trade-off for free content, the disruptive and persistent way pop-ups intrude is becoming intolerable to many online users. To counter the invasion more and more consumers are installing pop-up blockers -- software helpfully provided by the ISPs who themselves, along with other considerate media owners, are no longer offering the format to advertisers.
So is the pop-up dead? Will it be buried by the industry and left to rest in peace? Despite user frustration and an industry crackdown pop-ups are unlikely to disappear from our screens just yet.
While the use of the format will see a steady decline over time for now it still offers advantages. For advertisers looking to achieve a short-term, direct response the format can be highly effective.
A study by Advertising.com showed that pop-up ads can produce a clickthrough rate 13 times higher than a standard banner. The average conversion rate was more than 14 times better than that of a 468x60 banner. If you were to interrogate the DynamicLogic MarketNorms database you would also find, no doubt, that pop-up formats are highly efficient in raising brand awareness.
Although that is where it ends in terms of brand building, because pop-ups can have a highly detrimental effect on other brand metrics like favourability and purchase intent. Some have even gone as far as to say that using pop-ups is tantamount to "brand suicide".
For smaller web publishers pop-ups still offer good revenue potentials. With the big portals like MSN, AOL, Yahoo! eschewing the format those less scrupulous, and less wealthy, media owners can benefit from satisfying the demand.
For those who do insist on using the format, judicious application and careful supervision of campaigns is crucial. In order to maintain effectiveness and limit user annoyance advertisers and sites must look to strict frequency capping of pop-up campaigns.
Exposure should be limited to one ad a user a day, with the same user never seeing the same ad more than three or four times in total. By creating a unique cookie file for the ads publishers can control pop-up frequency. Some traffic all pop-ups and interstitials against a cookie that expires 24 hours after it is set, ensuring that no user sees more than one pop-up a day. Others handle this task manually by assigning a pop-up gatekeeper within the sales organisation. This individual can control pop-up inventory by limiting the total number of campaigns running on a site at any time. Some thoughtful publishers, like whoohoo.co.uk (also picked out by the DRC for its site accessibility), are even posting an apology to users for serving pop-ups, alongside the ad itself, with a clear offer to unsubscribe from receiving them in the future.
If these simple management tasks are carried out by all, then the rate of decline for pop-ups may be slow. If not, consumer annoyance will rise further and the format will soon be put to the sword.
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