Quote:
Originally posted by BradM
jayeff: you could argue the same thing with massive mainstream ad companies like 247media and advertising.com too then.
Their business is popups.
If they didn't work no one would use them.
Remember mainstream does it too... not just us.
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I did agree that they worked (start of second-last para).
But there are two ways of defining what works: there is the here and now, and there is tomorrow and next year, etc. Consoles are just one way in which we behave like traders in a tourist trap: it doesn't matter how we treat the customers, because chances are we shall never see them again.
That is likely true of many surfers. Once they have satisfied their curiosity, they probably won't buy any more. But the longer our industry exists, the more we depend on repeat customers. Year-on-year, newbie surfers become a smaller part of the whole 'Net population.
Go back 8 years and everyone had money bars and blind links were limited to the likes of Sex Swap. Then we found consoles and a lot of us stopped trying to target surfers and to filter them. If they didn't buy off your main page, you hit them with a console. If they didn't buy off the first console, you hit them with another. Etc.
But they remain an intrusive and because we couldn't restrain ourselves to using them reasonably, they are a very unpopular way of achieving what can be done in other ways. Perhaps the alternatives are not as effective in the short term, but you cannot seriously believe that the fear of popup hells isn't one reason that it is much harder to get surfers clicking these days.