[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.