Pop-Ups Drive Customers Away

Media Buyer ^ | 7/28/05

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Seventy percent of consumers said they were unlikely to purchase from, or even return to, a Web site that has pop-up advertising, registration log-on pages, software installation, or slow-loading pages, E-Commerce Times reports.

A study, commissioned by Hostway, a Chicago-based Web site hosting service, found that approximately 35 percent of visitors to commercial sites said pop-up ads were their number one pet peeve.

More than 24 percent of the respondents said they were extremely or somewhat likely to complain to the company when they were exasperated by a site.

[jjw]

Interesting solution. Mine was to no longer go to Drudge. I was particularly peeved that his popups were attempting to install a virus on my machine.

[MudSlide]

I just deleted Drudge

[monkapotamus]

These help:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10122137.html

[kingu]

"Seventy percent of consumers said they were unlikely to purchase from, or even return to, a Web site that has pop-up advertising, registration log-on pages, software installation, or slow-loading pages, E-Commerce Times reports."

Simply biased reporting, and not real statistics. Why do websites have pop-ups? Because people buy off of them. Advertisers don't dump money into advertising that doesn't provide results, and websites have pop-up advertising because advertisers will pay the most for them.

70% won't return? Gosh, the NY Times has a huge registration database, where people return time and time again, yet they have annoying pop-ups, registration and some of the slowest loading pages out there. Their newest trick is to show an advertisement before showing the story.

The absence of common sense here is that a reporter is making up statistics on the fly to support their preconceived notions and the additional lack of common sense exhibited by those folks who buy crud off of pop-up advertising.

[Lady Jag]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Windows XP's pop-up stopper. It stops most if not all of them, plus the Google toolbar works as backup. I'm not sure if Google gets any, but I get NO pop-ups at Drudge . . . on the rare occasion I go there.

[diverteach]

Drudge has pop-ups? Never seen any on my screen. Pop-ups are very fast to turn me off from a site as well. Must be my Norton doing a good job playing popup cop.

[ApplegateRanch]

Speaking of Drudge's page, is it refreshing more often than it used to...naturally serving up a new ad with each refresh?

[mmercier]

>> I'm not very computer literate when it comes to these types of software programs.

Me too.

I am just talking about the crap that loads itself into the scroll bar. About one in ten locks the works up, and I have to restart the machine. That is one of the greatest things about the Free Republic, no hassles, no nothing but information. I get everything that Drudge and every other net has to offer here. Every so often things go really bad, then I call mom and she fixes things.

[PAR35]

Web site that has pop-up advertising, registration log-on pages, software installation, or slow-loading pages,

Pop - ups - I don't allow them on my computer. Firefox plus a dedicated pop-up blocker get the job done.

Log on - That's what Bug Me Not is for.

Software installation - It depends. If I want something bad enough, I'll launch IE or Mozilla where I have installed the common plugins. Otherwise, I'll look for a link to their non-Flash version, or give up on the site.

Slow loading - Just pop open another tab and do something else while waiting for the page to load.

So 3 and a half of these 'problems' can be avoided by switching to Firefox and a quick download.

[Sofa King]

"The absence of common sense here is that a reporter is making up statistics on the fly"

I'm still waiting to see the data that your claims are based off of.

[kingu]

Sure. The advertising company that provides the ad content for my website offers me $6.30 per hundred pop ups on customer machines vs $2.30 per hundred static advertisement displays.

The advertisers are willing to pay three times as much for a product. That product is evidently worth that, since I've never had a PSA or other sideline advertisement appear as a popup.

This is pretty standard across the industry and a visit to many of the advertising portals and examining the rate cards will show you this. What does seem to drive folks away is a new window opening for every link - on pages where we did this, return visits dropped 40%.

We don't accept pop-ups for advertising, but the temptation traps a lot of folks out there. We've discovered though that if you spend the time and effort, you can get far better returns by seeking out particular advertisers that work well with your consumer base. We sold a heck of a lot of buffalo meat for one company, resulting in a lot of happiness for both us as the media provider and them as the advertiser.

[monkapotamus]

The following site has some tests for everyone who would like to verify their popup-blocking capabilities:

http://www.popuptest.com/

Firefox's popup blocking feature alone doesn't get the job done anymore. But the code below in conjunction with Firefox works well:

Firefox popups

Like you, I love Firefox for many reasons, including popup blocking. So over the last few weeks I’ve been surprised to see occasional popups.

It turns out that some clever people figured out that you could launch popups from Flash, getting around the Firefox default settings.

Fortunately, you can get around it:

1. Type about:config into the Firefox location bar.
2. Right-click on the page and select New and then Integer.
3. Name it privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins
4. Set the value to 2.

The possible values are:

• 0: Allow all popups from plugins.
• 1: Allow popups, but limit them to dom.popup_maximum.
• 2: Block popups from plugins.
• 3: Block popups from plugins, even on whitelisted sites.

[Sofa King]

"The advertisers are willing to pay three times as much for a product. That product is evidently worth that, since I've never had a PSA or other sideline advertisement appear as a popup."

That indicates that a user is more likely to click on a pop-up than a static ad, not that traffic to the web site with the ads is not affected by pop-ups. Your data has no relevance to the article's statement.

[kingu]

The above comparison shows the last six month's 'reach' statistic from Alexia (a semi-spyware utility). Myway has no popups, Drudge Report is rife with them. If a huge proportion don't return to the site, why are the two lines similar in keeping to their range?

[Sofa King]

Now you're REALLY stretching.

For this data to have any relevance, everybody who visited Drudge's website in the entire period from Feb to Jul would have had to have done so for the first time in their lives on Feb. Drudge's sight has been around for years. Also, basing your conclusions off of the data for a single website as compared to another completely dissimilar website is a crime against statistical analysis.

[kingu]

Actually for your conclusion to be valid, the assumption has to be that the traffic to Drudge Report would be declining (over half would decline to return due to the popups) and the traffic to MyWay would be increasing due to the lack of popups.

The nearly opposite is true - the Drudge Report is increasing their traffic, MyWay is declining in traffic.

Dissimilar websites? Both are third party news portals, and a fair amount of traffic on MyWay comes from Drudge Report, making a nice synergistic connection to the data.

What evidence is there to support this article?

[diamond6]

Thanks!!!

[Sofa King]

Actually for your conclusion to be valid, the assumption has to be that the traffic to Drudge Report would be declining (over half would decline to return due to the popups)

Only if everybody who visited Drudge's website in the entire period from Feb to Jul had done so for the first time in their lives on Feb. Otherwise, the first time hits from the 70% who do not come back will be uniformly distributed across the months from Feb to Jul and, when combined the 30% who continue to return throughout the entire period after comming the first time, cause an increase in traffic.

What evidence is there to support this article?

"A study, commissioned by Hostway, a Chicago-based Web site hosting service,"

Now, I'm going to ask you for the last time, do you have any data to post that actually backs up your statement or are you just trying to cover for your first stupid comment by posting random statistics that you can't logically link to your claim?

[Chief_Joe]

Muy bíen y mucho gracias.

[kingu]

Indeed, your point might have carried just a tiny portion of weight if MyWay maintained a similar or better line than DrudgeReport. Instead, you completely ignored that two news portals with two completely separate theories for revenue stream, one in compliance with the assertions of the article, the other in opposition, resulted in real world data that the one not in compliance increased their traffic by a million readers, vs the one in compliance which lost a million readers.

Drudge not acceptable? Let's try the NY Times vs MyWay.com The NY Times has popups, interstatial advertising, required registration and a pay component. MyWay has none of this.



The page views do not change significantly for either of them.



MyWay.Com vs LaTimes.com - the LA Times website includes banner advertisements, flash animations and required registration. Statistically a flat line over time.

You don't agree? Wonderful. Don't care. Once the conversation degrades to assertions of stupidity, it isn't worth continuing. Perhaps others might find the graphs interesting.