Pop Up Ads Bad For Business
from the surprise-surprise dept
It's been about three years since pop up and pop under ads first started becoming really popular. It didn't take much thinking to realize that these things piss off people who view them and that pissing off people is generally not a good way to run a business. However, it's taken those three years for someone to actually do a study that proves pop up ads are bad for business. The reason? They piss people off. Maybe we should have gotten a group of ordinary web surfers together in 2001 and written this report at that time. This new study finds that most people close down the ads before they were even done loading, and many more simply close them down without looking. Of those who actually do look at the ads, many have a negative reaction. In fact, over 60% of users said they mistrust any company that uses pop-up ads. The study concludes that using such ads is like committing "brand suicide". Will lazy marketers listen? Probably not. It's just common sense that pissing off users with intrusive advertising they don't want is bad business. However, the lazy marketer skips out on common sense and forgets that marketing is about giving people what they want, not about forcing things they don't want on them.
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"Well gee, I know *I* love seeing a pop up ad telling me about a unique and wonderful product that I might be interested, just like I love receiving announcements about new products and services right there in my inbox"
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Bad advertising?
The argument for popups and intrusive ads is based on a truism of advertising: that there's no such thing as bad press. Name recognition, the theory goes, is the primary thing; over time people forget about where they saw the brand and what they initially thought of it, but they rememember the brand and tend to favor familiar brands over unfamiliar ones when making a purchase.
So now we have a study that shows intrusive ads don't work, which is great -- I have *two* popup blockers installed on my system -- but there are other studies that examine the same question and reach the opposite conclusion. Which study are the marketers going to pay attention to? I'll give you one guess.
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Popup advertising is fundamentally rude.
Just as you start to read your paper, a young man thrusts his face between you and the page you're trying to read.
He tells you that he is a pretty good Admin person, he' believes that you are looking to hire someone and that he's sure he'd fit the bill.
He stays there, smiling benignly at you until you ask him to move.
Now, would you hire this man?
Would you even think about hiring him?
Ever?
I submit that the man has been what can only be described as rude.
I also submit that you'd be retty unlikely to even think about employing him for just that reason.
Ever.
So why should a company demonstrate exactly the same kind of unacceptable behaviour and expect one to be so impressed by it that one buys their product?
Somehow I don't think so.
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