Demise of pop-ups, coming real soon

'I think
that a lot of companies need to look at what’s going to be effective to sustain business long-term. It’s a smart decision now,” she says. “Doing things for the short term is not worth it if in the long term it’s going to alienate
customers.'

Demise of pop-ups,
coming real soon

Stampede kicks in as sites noose pesky ad format

By Toni Fitzgerald

    First iVillage did it, then Ask Jeeves. America Online joined in last week, and so of course MSN had to follow.
   The “it” in question is killing off pop-up ads.
   What seemed like a savvy move by a few consumer-friendly sites is fast turning into a full-fledged movement. Now that some larger companies have joined the trend, the pop-up’s chances of survival appear increasingly grim.
   Pop-ups will not disappear from the internet but going forth they will be increasingly associated with lower-end sites and grittier e-commerce functions.
Imagine the pop-up ad becoming the carnival barker of the internet, full of sales bluster and false promises of what lurks behind the tent door respectable folks would rather not enter.
   “I think it’s just a reaction to the market,” says Canton Donofrio Partners’ Sean Canton. “It comes from the volumes of negative feedback sites have been getting from their customers.”
    Web users hate pop-ups, and they always have. What's changing is that sites are becoming more sensitized to users' feelings as they struggle to gain parity with more traditional media, especially as promises of a revival in new media advertising seem to push further and further into the future.
    Ask Jeeves, which recently posted encouraging third-quarter numbers, announced its decision earlier this month to eliminate pop-ups, and communications director Alexa Rudin says she hasn’t heard any complaints, from customers or advertisers.
    “I think that a lot of companies need to look at what’s going to be effective to sustain business long-term. It’s a smart decision now,” she says. “Doing things for the short term is not worth it if in the long term it’s going to alienate customers.”
   She predicts that many sites will be taking a long look at their pop-up policies now that the trend is underway. She says that as targeting techniques get more refined, ad tactics will follow.
    “I think as [online] ad units get more sophisticated and the targeting capabilities get more sophisticated, I think we’re going to see some of the bigger sites take advantage of this,” Rudin says.
    “Ads can target a group of a few very completely. If you’re searching for cheap airfare deals, an ad for Orbitz may actually give you an answer to what you’re looking for. There’s not a lot of harm in that. At some point, it’s going to be a lot of niche advertising.”
   Women’s portal iVillage kicked off the trend in July. A user survey showed that more than 90 percent found pop-ups annoying. The company, which says it has always put a premium on customer service, especially now that it’s planning to launch an ISP, did away with most of them. It still uses pop-ups for in-house research and promotions.
   The problem with pop-ups is not so much their volume -- they comprise about 3 percent of all online advertising, according to Nielsen//NetRatings data. It is rather the annoyance factor they represent. Who hasn’t been caught in an endless stream of click-offs with an online casino site or computer camera?
   Although many companies contain their pop-ups to one per session or one per X number of minutes, the ones that do get through annoy consumers. At a rough time for online content providers, sites can’t afford to alienate customers.
   Canton says that’s why we’re seeing such a concerted response by the big companies.
   “Companies are just starting to go the other way when there is so much negative feedback,” he says.
   He says most companies have backed off from spamming, another advertising practice that makes consumers mad. He agrees with Ask Jeeves’ Rudin that “it’s better in the long term not to do it. Even if there are lots of advantages, you see the negative feedback. And it does have a negative impact on the brand.”
Of course, sometimes banning pop-ups has less to do with being user-friendly than keeping up with your competitors.
   The week after America Online announced its moratorium on pop-ups, coinciding with the launch of the new AOL 8.0, MSN not only dropped the price of its new MSN 8 below AOL’s, but also unveiled a no-pop-up policy.
   The statement released by the company last week pointed out the savings over AOL as well as the consumer advantages of the new product.
“This is really about continuing to give consumers a better product, at a better price,” said Richard Bray, vice president for MSN, in the statement.
   “With MSN 8, people will get what they care about most, including communications, parental controls, better browsing and less unwanted junk e-mail.”
   With four large companies having dropped pop-up ads, it’s likely only a matter of time until others join the pack. After all, Canton points out, no one wants to be the last one continuing a practice that’s unpopular with consumers.
   At the same time, the little guys may not be able to afford to dump advertising of any type. That could lead to small-site ghetto-ization of the once-mighty pop-up.
“I think there will be a lot of pressure by companies” to drop pop-ups, Canton says. “All the major properties should follow suit in a relatively short period of time. But there are an awful lot of web sites just trying to support themselves through advertising who are desperate enough to say, ‘OK, the big guys won’t take them, we’ll take them.’”

-Toni Fitzgerald is a staff writer for Media Life.

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