Monday, June 25, 2001

Pop Up Banners Very Annoying to the Public
Webmaster Techniques Special Repor

Listen up Amazon.com, AOL, New York Times, LA Times, and thousands of Webmasters who think nothing of using pop-up banners - the public is getting highly annoyed and fed up with this forced invasion of their surfing routines. It's causing some visitors to form detours around sites using pop-up banners. It's also hurting company branding efforts as visitors think lower of sites utilyzing and providing pop up banners.

With ad rates down, many high profile Websites are reverting to annoying pop-up banners to make money online. The problem is those sites are losing respect in the process. Even Amazon.com, which use to be a leader in customer service online, doesn't think twice about using pop-up banners for company promotions.

So why do Websites large and small ignore user complaints and throw up intrusive pop-up banners every time a person visits their site? The reason is because the ads get noticed more, which means more ad money. And $$$ speak big - to the point that Websites could care less about how intrusive or annoying these banners are.

A new report from Statistical Research, Inc. (SRI) -- shows that pop-up Internet advertisements are 50% more likely to be noticed than banner ads, but also that they are 100% more likely to be considered intrusive.

Nearly half (49%) of active Internet users "agreed strongly" that pop-up ads get noticed (versus 33% for banner ads); but 62% felt strongly that pop-ups interfere with their reading or use of a Web page (compared to 31% for banners).

But sites that use pop-up banners or appear on them are losing respect, which makes branding efforts as an "industry leader" more difficult to achieve.

Respondents in the Statistical Research survey were less likely to view companies that use pop-ups as being industry leaders.

Furthermore, pop-up banners have become so publicly annoying that mainstream press are now widely reporting on the issue.

The Associated Press is tackling the issue of a company called X10, which has been annoying millions of Internet users with mass pop-up banner campaigns. There may be a secondary reason to the company's madness (besides selling tiny video cameras) -- the company is trying to get an IPO and by pulling the pop-up banners from its site, it is able to count each pop up banner as a "visitor" to the X10 Website. Since the company is throwing money at tens of millions of pop-up banners, its Website is now one of the "Top 10 visited sites on the Web". So every time you see the forced banner, they count you as a visitor to their Website even if you immediately close the banner without clicking it. The result is that the company can deceitfully claim it is one of the most visited sites on the Web and thus apparently help its IPO efforts.

According to CNET, companies that allow Pop Up banners to appear on their site, "risk alienating readers and seeing their own traffic numbers fall."

Other sites have strong policies against Pop Up banners. Digital Media FX (www.digitalmediafx.com), a leading online publication for animators, visual effects artists, and animation enthusiasts has a posted policy against the use of pop-up banners. The site lists five strict policies to help make each visitors stay more pleasant. The number one policy is "We will never frustrate you with pop-up banners."

The continued persistence of Websites to annoy visitors with Pop-Ups is resulting in vast sales and downloads of ad-blocking software programs that kill banner advertising before it reaches the viewer's eyes. In the end, the industry seems to be shooting itself in the foot by encouraging the downloading of such software through the intolerable continuing of annoying tactics to make an extra buck. In the end, the blocking of such ads will only hurt the industry more.