What’s up with popups? I don’t mean the thing that happens when a batter gets too far under a fastball, I mean those maddening advertising windows that crowd your computer screen when you surf the Web. It can take several minutes to swat down the lot of them, giving that animated bimbo–you know the one–a chance to launch into her nails-on-a-blackboard spiel about did-you-ever-wonder-why-your-computer-runs-faster-etc. How can infuriating potential customers in this manner possibly sell product? More to the point, why can’t I turn these goddamn things off? –Mike Sharrock, Saint Paul, Minnesota
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Mike. Take a deep breath. Although you evidently haven’t noticed it, the era of the popup may be coming to an end. I say “may” because one can never underestimate the ingenuity of Web marketers and the evil programming wizards in their employ. For now, though, downtrodden users such as yourself are getting a break, mainly because popups (not to mention popovers, popunders, and other variants) have ticked off so many people that the heavy hitters in the business have come to their aid. We’ll get to that in a bit. First, the basics:
- Popups became popular because the original mainstay of online advertising, the banner ad, wasn’t working as a marketing tool. The “click-through rate” on banners was dismal, and many marketers were skeptical that the Web would ever become a viable advertising medium. Partly for that reason, online ad spending declined from $8.1 billion in 2000 to $6 billion in 2002. That year, however, intrusive online ads began to catch on in a big way. How well they work is debatable; the main thing is, marketers thought they worked, and online spending increased to $7.3 billion in 2003 and a projected $9.1 billion in 2004.
