The Politics of Pop-Ups, Pop-Up Blockers and the Pop-Up Error Message: ” Pop ups are dead- so what? First of all, let me just get this out in the open: there is nothing wrong with pop-ups per say. Next, let me qualify what I just said: Pop-ups are ineffective as an advertising tool and are not recommended on the web since pop-up blockers are ubiquitous. E.g. Every browser and search engine tool these days has a pop-up blocker: AOL pop-up blocker, Google Toolbar pop-up blocker, Yahoo Toolbar pop-up blocker, Firefox built in pop-up blocker, third party free pop-up blocker tools…etc. Google Killed the Pop-Up From the late 90’s to the early 00’s Google quietly used it’s simple and easy to use design (read great user experience) to hijack the pop-up as a form of web advertising. If you remember every credible large and small website used pop-up windows for advertising and more. Google’s text advertising (right column block short phrase with a link) wiped out the pop-up since the click through rates (CTR) for text based advertising (or contextual advertising) were higher: under .5% CTR for pop-ups to 2-3% CTR for text ads. Back to ‘There is Nothing Wrong with Pop-ups’ Pop-ups are not the problem. It is the forcing of them on your users without telling them, which also violates the permission-based marketing model.
