This monster pop-up is courtesy of my anti-virus program. It’s free, so I have to put up with this daily. I think it’s time to buy one. I don’t know who thought that online pop-up advertising was a good idea. To visit a Web site and suddenly have something thrust in your face that you didn’t want to see is worse than the television commercial, and almost as bad as the loathed telemarketer. Pop-ups were especially popular around 2003-2005. Advertisers have waned in their use, probably because there are so many software programs that combat the problem. The release of Service Pack 2 for the XP operating system in August 2004 created a much stronger defense against pop-ups. Google Toolbar also has a feature that suppresses pop-ups as does Symantec’s Internet Security. (At least, it used to.) Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition is another freeware program that does a great job cleaning out trojans, cookies and malware that might be causing pop-ups. A great summary of pop-ups is offered by Cecil Adams on his Web site, The Straight Dope.
Why did advertisers think pop-ups were a good idea in the first place? They were looking for something to replace the dismal performance of banner advertising. Overall, spending on Internet advertising declined from $8.1 billion in 2000 to $6 billion in 2002. Pop-up ads were largely responsible for that number bumping up to $7.3 billion in 2003. The incorporation of flash animation had marketers in love with anything that moved for a while. For users, the novelty wore off quickly. The computer system resources needed to run some of the scripts found in pop-ups often caused computers to grind to a halt, especially when ads were being thrown a the user at such a fast pace. I was a victim myself from time to time.
Spam has an insidious reputation as well. It literally clogs networks, slows mail, and crashes computers. I had an employee who claimed that he couldn’t respond to my requests from him because he had so much spam, he never saw my e-mails. This was at work! As his boss, it led me to wonder what he had been doing on the Internet to generate so much spam. The only way we fixed the problem was to assign him a new e-mail address and make him promise never to practice unsafe Web surfing again. Spam should not be confused with targeted, opt-in, e-mail messaging that the consumer consents to receive. In 2003, Congress passed the CANN-SPAM act (other wise known as Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act). This has slowed the proliferation of spam, but it still hasn’t gone away.
Both pop-up ads and spam seem to obviously be the antithesis of what integrated marketing communication strives to be. Anything that is going to annoy the consumer can’t be good for building the kind of relationship that is needed for sustainable brand equity. These two marketing tactics are for the one-time sale – take the money and run kind of marketing program.
