Pop-up Adds

1 Pages 325 Words

Pop-up Ads: The Most Annoying Advertisement Ever
In today’s electronic market, new ways to get potential customers’ attention have become of utmost importance. Some internet sites, it seems, will stop at nothing to get you to come to their site. This ruthless advertising frenzy has birthed an abomination: the pop-up ad. What better way to get a person to come to a specific site than to put a big advertisement right in their face whether they want it or not? Many of these pop-ups don’t even have the name of the site on them, merely some game or offer of a “special prize” for those unwitting dupes that click on them. In fact, some don’t even require you to click on them. They merely need you to “mouse” over them.1 One site with such a pop-up ad is Orbitz.com, a major proponent of this style of advertisement. In one month, they delivered more than 400 million pop-ups or pop-unders.
This form of advertisement continues annoy me. Whenever I get onto a site and receive 3 more open sites that I really didn’t want to go to, it never fails to make me leave the site posthaste. However, on the flipside of things, it has proved to me to be an effective form of advertising. I will occasionally see a site promoted in one of these ads and be intrigued by it.
From a profit-seeking point of view, using pop-up ads is a good idea. If a company gets more “hits,” than they can sell more ads, and thus make more money. From a customer loyalty point of view however, I believe that pop-up ads are detrimental. If a person goes to a site, and each time he does so is bombarded by a flurry of new windows advertising for things he doesn’t want, the less likely he is to come back to that site....