Say Anything Blog

Pop up ads are annoying as hell. Websites that cause five or six of them to pop up on your computer at once are even more annoying. I've wondered before if this type of blitz-krieg advertising even works, and it would appear now that I was right.

From Media Life Magazine via Milt's File:

Study after study has found that consumers dislike pop-up ads and the companies who use them. Now they're even starting to dislike the web sites where they appear.

That's the finding from a new report from U.K. behavior consultancy company Bunnyfoot Universality, which says that consumers have an extreme negative reaction not only to the companies advertising with pop-ups but the sites that display them.

Sixty percent said that they distrust sites that carry pop-ups and advertisers that use them, and 50 percent click the ads off before they've even finished loading. Only 2 percent of the time did respondents allow ads to load long enough to see the entire company logo.

I'm not sure I'd need a study to come to the conclusion that pop-up ads aren't working, but its nice to see my suspicions confirmed.

To be honest, I really don't mind seeing advertisements. I've even ended up purchasing products of services from companies I've seen advertised on the internet, but the ads I've responded to have not been of the invasive, annoying variety. I don't know who would respond to those type of ads.

Half of the spam I get these days are so badly misspelled (to avoid filters) or are so obviously fraudulent that a person would have to be drunk or out of their mind to even consider doing business with the company being advertised. Pop-up ads seem even more ridiculous. At this point, I see so many of them that clicking to close them has become more of a reflex than anything else. I don't even notice it anymore.

So why are so many companies still putting money into this type of advertising? Somebody has to be paying for it or the ads wouldn't keep appearing on my computer.