Pop Up Ads: Revenue vs Visitors

I was talking with a webmaster lately that he told me that pop up ads tended to drive a lot of visitors away from his site so he pushed them off.

I think that having a couple of pop ups for each user is not so bad, but I would like to have your opinion on this.

Have you ever had such an experience?

Hmmm, well Pop Ups are extremely annoying. If I have to use them on my sites I limit them to 1 pop-up per 24 hour visit. About a year ago I had a fairly popular site recieving around 750 uniques per day with about 700 of these being repeat visitors. I implememted som pop up ads - And I dropped to around 500 uniques per day after 2 weeks. Wether this was just a coincidence I do not know but after taking the pop ups off it did slowly increase in visits again.

I found a way that is less annoying. I show pop ups only to visitors that come from search engines. So all the other users that are loyal to the site they wont see any pop up

That's an interesting way to implement pop ups and one of the safest. But there is a trick here too.

What if your new users that come from search engines do not come back because of your pop ups?

I think the odd pop up here and there isnt that bad - the only site I refuse to visit are the ones that put a pop up on every single page!

Yeah that is really bad. Ofcourse at this time it is very occasionally, and the truth is that the most users have allready a pop up stoper installed (or firefox)

My conclusiion from everything you said here is that is not so good to run pop ups in your site.

You have right, but pop ups is the best converting CPM based way to earn money from your site...

Yeah, buthow many pepole on the web use popup blockers stopping those popups? I perosnally have about 3 popup blockers.

I use Firefox and it is blocking almost every pop up

Although I dont mind the odd pop up here and there - I go out of my way to make sure I dont click on one! I did not ask for it to open in a new window so I refuse to click on it out of principle - even if its something that interests me - so dont expect too many leads from them either as I think this is the opinion of many.

I don't seem to get any pop-ups on my pop-up blocker, unless I clicked on a pop-up link. I too find them very annoying, and wouldn't take the time to read what they've got to say.

But before I had a pop-up blocker, I stay clear from sites with pop-ups. So even if the site has one pop-up, I won't find myself visiting the site again..

I'm bitterly against pop ups, they cheapen the look of your site, so in addition to annoying viewers, it just makes the site look worse and you end up with less hits.

I agree with Graeme, I really don't like popups at all. I never click popups either, its just extremely annoying to have to close them. Firefox blocks a lot of them but there are certain sites which it never blocks.

I hate popups, I think they should be avoided. Other methods of adveritising are much better for website visitors.

I have a significant group of members on old, slow pcs: students, writers, struggling comics.

If I had even one pop-up ever I would lose them.

For most sites, popups are annoying and they will drive visitors away. However, if you have a page on your site with a video, a game, or something else that's likely to divert the visitor's attention, it's unlikely that they're going to click on a CPC ad. Combine that with the popularity of videos and the fact that hosting videos takes a lot of bandwidth, and popups on video/game pages begin to souns more reasonable.
Tom

I never liked popups from the beginning. Now that I have been twice heavily infected with Spyware, browser hijackers, and the like from simply closing a popup; any popup that manages to get past my popup stopper is an immediate invitation to leave the site.

I've had it, I don't care how great the offer, how great your site is; one popup and I'm gone.

I have a question about pop up ads (i am not sure if this is the right place to ask).
it is against the tos of many cpc programs to click your own ads.
what about pop up ads? what happens when you visit your site and you see the pop up ad?

its okay because they pay you per 1000 views. one view from you, the site owner, doesnt really matter, unless you do it so frequently.

I was asking because i have a forum and i visit it frequently. About 15 times per day. And every page i visit opens a new pop up ad. what about that? is that a problem?

You can mod your site not to show pops to the admins.

But anyway if you want my opinion that will be very annoying for your members.

For this mod i have to change the pop up ad code? This is also against the tos of many pop up programs, right? If there is another way to do that i would like to know, if anybody knows (i use ipb 2.1.5).

I agree with you. I also think that pop up ads are very annoying for my members. But if the members are not interested about cpc ads? so i use pop up ads for now.
when i will have many members, i am going to keep only cpc ads.

(sorry for my bad english!)

No it is not against rules. I don't know how to do it in IPB, but it needs some php knowledge.


If they are not interesting about cpc, they just don't click them. But whenever someone loads a page gets a pop up, it is for sure that will abbandon your site very soon.


Don't worry. Your english are much better than mine 8)

well you can switch to popunders instead, it is less annoying. and i know with some cpm sponsors, there is an option where you can display your pop once per session, once every hour, every two hours, once per day, etc.

popunders is what i am using but i posted here because i have the same question about the impressions of the admin. I also know about the sessions but i had this question and i asked here because i see that you (most members of the forum) know many things about those programs and generally most question that a webmaster may have!

I personally do not like pop-up's and avoid any site that has them. It's a matter of trust with me. Same goes with pup-under's. I think pop-up ads are bad for business and I do not trust any site that uses them.
However, I have no problem with clicking on a link that launches a pop-up if I know ahead of time about it.