You go to your favorite news site and boom, you get one. You click on that shopping link and pow, there's another one. You hit an adult website and zing, there's yet another and another and another and I don't mean dirty pictures.
Pop-up advertising is not new but it's still a controversial topic among surfers and webmasters alike. Surfers claim to hate them. Last May, Statistical Research Inc. released a study entitled: "How People Use T the Internet 2001". They found that 33% of Internet users noticed banner ads while 49% noticed pop-ups. They also found that 67% of users felt
pop-up ads interfered with their web experience. What this means is that a great many surfers recall pop-up ads because the ad interrupted their time on a web site.
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"If one looks at the net as an entertainment medium, then one will have a much easier time understanding that advertising is what makes entertainment possible." |
Type "pop-up ad" in a search engine and you will get many pages devoted to the annihilation of this sort of advertising. You can also go to a software download site like CNET's Download.com and type the phrase "pop-up" in their search box. That search will result in close to fifty programs designed to stop those offending little windows from ruining your day. That there is a definite and vocal percentage of Internet dwellers who do not like pop-up advertising windows can't be denied.
The question has to be asked, if people don't like them, then why do so many web sites (adult and non-adult) use them?
The most famous example of a pop-up ad is the X10 camera campaign. You've probably seen this "Tiny Hidden Camera" ad present itself behind the main window of one of your favorite news or portal pages like Yahoo or MSNBC.
While technically, a window that pops up behind another window is referred to as a pop-under or interstitial ad, a window still appears that the user did not open on purpose. No had ever heard of X10 cameras before they began this not-so-new method of online selling. Now every one who uses the Internet knows who they are. Of course the company has built and incredible amount of brand-name recognition because of the interstitial windows, but has that recognition resulted in a boycott of their product by angry customers? Quite the contrary.
X10 claims that in one month, their pop-under appeared 34 million times. Of that 34 million, 20 percent kept the pop under window open and 1.2 million of those who did not close the window visited the X10 site for three or more minutes. From those 1.2 million visitors, X10 generated a sales ratio of 4.2 percent which netted the company around four million dollars in revenue. That's four million dollars in sales for just one month.
In adult webmaster terminology, X10's click thru ratio is 1:708. Being that the average click thru ratio on a gallery is 1:1000, 1:708 is a great improvement. The only problem is the majority of gallery makers are not allowed to code pop-ups or pop under windows into their galleries. Traffic traders forbid popping windows on sites within their networks. Then again, a preponderance of paysites pop a window or three when a surfer clicks through a tour and a great many free sites use pop ups to snag their stray visitors.
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Whether or not you use pop up advertising to increase your revenue depends entirely on your audience and the type of page you are building. The pop up ad only enhances the chances that you will get more surfers to your desired target page. What happens after you lure them there still depends on your salesmanship and the quality of your product.
Just like television viewers will suffer through commercials because the program is so intriguing, a web surfer will endure the occasional pop up or pop under if the site they are on has engaging content.
Humans are predictable creatures. If they can get something for free, they will. The Internet (adult and non adult) is still in an experimental stage when it comes to e commerce. So many saw a future where surfers would do all their purchasing online and that future didn't happen on their misguided schedules.
Online advertisers mistakenly thought that click-thru ratios and site traffic meant more than actual sales. While the Internet is still a viable e commerce medium, it is primarily an entertainment vehicle. Those who do not understand this concept will never make money from the Internet. What sells and will always sell best on the net are products and services that are not generally available in the real world.
If one looks at the net as an entertainment medium, then one will have a much easier time understanding that advertising is what makes entertainment possible.
As an adult webmaster, you are selling entertainment. The freebies you give to your surfers through galleries, free sites and pay site tours are a lot like regular network television. The sponsors and programs you advertise are like cable content in comparison. Your free content is there to sell. Pop up ads are the Internet's version of commercials. Most people hate commercials but they understand that those commercials pay for their free viewership. Your job is to convince your surfer that what your ads offer is far better than the entertainment you are giving away.
Pop up ads may be the scourge of the Internet, but surfers will eventually grow accustomed to them if they are incorporated sparingly. They may not appeal to the majority of surfers but unless they are outlawed pop ups (or something new and more intrusive) are here to stay.