Pop-up Ads: Bound for Extinction?
by Beeb Ashcroft

Okay, everyone who loves pop-up ads, raise your hands! …What, no one? I thought as much. Hatred for pop-ups seems to be almost universal. So I have to wonder . . . how long can they last?

When was the last time you clicked on a popup ad? Or glanced at it for more than half a second, before grunting and closing it? I can’t imagine that pop-ups have anywhere near the click thru rate of banner ads, simply because of the annoyance factor. Most banner ads are fairly unobtrusive (though I’d like to have a word with whoever designed the 10,000-color-flashing, seizure-inducing “WINNER!!!!” ad); but pop-ups range from annoying to REALLY annoying.

The worst of the bunch are the “sophisticated” pop-ups, which trap the user into looking at them in a variety of ways. I believe the technical term for these are “Evil Pop-ups”. Some will take over the entire screen, obliterating even your taskbar, providing no obvious means of escape. (I’ve seen ones who had a decoy “x” button that merely popped up ANOTHER ad) If you’re a computer enthusiast, you probably know to simply hit alt+F4 or ctrl+alt+del to rid yourself of the ad; but I can imagine the frustration of a casual user being stuck at an ad for “Slim-Get”. And even more pointless are the “about:blank” windows that popup, but stay hidden in your taskbar, revealing nothing even when you maximize them. What exactly is the use of an ad for nothing?

Also highly obnoxious are pop-ups that immediately begin playing booming music while flashing images of Diet Kola in your face. And how about embedded DHTML ads that obliterate the page, forcing you to look for a tiny “x” box to get rid of them? This is why I can’t see pop-ups having a very long life span; bombarding users with a variety of intrusions while they surf is only going to agitate them – and alienate them.