March 2003
Tired of those Pop-up Ads on the Interent?

You know those ads if you spend any time on the Internet – they pop up and take over much of your computer screen. To many consumers, they are at best bothersome and if you are unlucky enough to accidentally to hit them with your mouse, you will get bombarded with a stream of advertisements for the latest in home-monitoring devices, insurance, vacation discount sites, etc. Moreover, you will most likely download an Internet “cookie” into your computer that allows the advertiser to track your movements over the Internet.
Advertisers initially used bannerads that appeared across the top and bottom of computer screens—promotions that consumers quickly learned to ignore. Beginning in 1995, advertisers resorted to the more bothersome pop-up displays in the hope you couldn’t miss them. Indeed, market research indicates consumers are 50 percent more likely to notice a pop-up ad than a banner ad.
Market research firm Dynamic Logic surveyed consumers and
discovered that consumers rank popup ads just ahead of telemarketers in the category of undesirable advertising. Fortunately, according to the Wall Street Journal, advertisers are growing increasingly wary of the consumer backlash, and advertising using the pop-up ads has fallen off dramatically. Late last fall, America Online (AOL) announced that it would discontinue using pop-up ads to prevent its 35 million frustrated customers from defecting to another Internet service provider.
AOL’s departure from using popup ads reportedly cost the company about $30 million. According to the Journal, AOL has moved back towards using more banner ads. EarthLink, an AOL competitor, offers a service that actually blocks pop-up ads, while AOL competitors MSN and Yahoo still use pop-up ads. My favorite Internet search site, www.google.com, does not allow pop-up ads.