Next time you click on the ?close? icon of a pop-up window, keep in mind that as much as Rs 5 lakh has been spent to make that window grab a few seconds of your attention. And even worse, your indifferent attitude is pushing one form of advertising to the verge of extinction.
Whenever we talk, or even think about pop-ups, the first reaction is that of annoyance. Internet surfers wonder why companies publish pop-ups when there?s hardly any one looking at these, and there are hundreds of other mediums to display their products better.
Even advertisers seem to have sensed the mood. They have, consequently, come up with the newer version?pop-under ads. This sneakier, smarter relative of pop-up ads is displayed in a new browser window which uploads behind the current browser window. Though pop-under ads do not disrupt a view of the main window, the acceptability of these ads is still arguable.
?Pop-ups or pop-unders are almost pass? in today’s trend of digital advertising, which has dynamically grown to include more user-engaging ad units. Leading publishers are increasingly shying away from these formats, bearing in mind the lower user reaction and intrusiveness they carry,? said Debadutta Upadhyaya, vice-president (India) of Vdopia. ?Agencies and advertisers, too, don?t benefit from pop-up ad units as the incremental CTRs (click through rates) don?t justify the cost parameters. Brand advertisers are looking beyond clicks these days and are paying attention instead to brand metrics like brand lift, awareness, etc.?
Along with browser antipathy, what is acting as a deterrent to pop-up and pop-under ads is the emergence of several pop-up-blocking softwares. Ecom Software?s PopUpBuster, Panicware?s Pop-Up Stopper and Sureshot?s Stop-the-Pop are some of the softwares that are dealing the death blow to the pop-up industry. What?s more, many of the top sites don?t even allow pop-ups, and there are some who use pop-ups for self promotions, no third-party is allowed to intervene.
?The pop-up ad industry has been strangulated and is gradually decreasing in size. They are no longer effective as most Internet browsers now come with built-in pop-up blockers. Pop-ups are now outdated, and there are more, and better, ad properties there to be used,? said Samir Malkani, senior creative director of Lowe Lintas.
When Malkani speaks of ?other ad properties?, he hints at the shifting trend of digital advertising towards video contents, pre-rolls, skins with product placement and social media-enabled ad units rather than pop-ups and pop-unders.
?Look at the top 10 publishers today and you will notice that video ads are the ?in thing? and are actually driving the display growth story in India. The branding options offered by video ad formats are eye-catching with high user involvement, and provide value for money for the advertisers against parameters like brand awareness, message association etc,? said Upadhyaya.
While pop-up ads do seem to be becoming history, there is, however, a school of thought that believes the job of pop-ups is still unfinished, and these still manage to attract user attention.
Said Ad Network co-founder and business head Akshay Garg, ?Pop-up are the hardest to ignore ad units. Traditional banner ads on websites may get ignored due to placement or creative issues. However, pop-up ads are hard to ignore since they appear in front of the content you wish to browse. Also, since they open in a new window, they are on the screen till the time you close it thereby increasing the presence and the impact.?
?The effectiveness of pop-up ads depends on various factors. If the ads are interesting, it will have an impact. For example, if I am thinking about a holiday and pop-up appears, offering me a four-day five-night vacation offer, I will definitely be drawn to it. The placement and the target viewers of the ads are very important. For a business user, if you give a pop-up on mobile phones on one of the stock indices sites, it is bound to be a disaster. But if you place the same ad on social network sites, where the users are mostly teenagers, it can be more effective. So it depends on how you place the ads. At times it could be disturbing, at times it could be interesting,? says Vikash Jain, business director of Micromax,a handset maker.
So, if we go by the purists, pop-ups are here to stay for some more time. But advertisers in India feel pop-ups will become a footnote soon, rather than an elaborate chapter in the annals of advertising history.