Pop-ups Abound, But Most Advertisers Remain Inline
By David Martin, Marc Ryan

Its three AM and after a twelve-hour, caffeine-fueled binge of 'Scooby Doo: Night of 100 Frights' on your PlayStation Two you log on to your favorite cheat code website to learn the elusive 'bunny slippers and lampshade' power-up. That's when it hits you: POP! POP! POP! The purple Bonzi.com gorilla is screaming at you to download him, Classmates.com asks if Dirk is still a jerk, and Cassava Enterprises is tempting you to blow your most recent paycheck on Casino-on-Net.com.

If this scenario sounds familiar, you won't be surprised to know that during the first seven months of 2002, advertisers purchased and launched over 11.3 billion pop-up ad impressions on the web. More surprising may be that despite the voluminous nature of the phenomenon, the bulk of pop-up advertising originated from a select few advertisers. Promoting products from travel to online gambling to free computer software, just over 60 advertisers accounted for 80 percent of all pop-ups. Whether or not this number increases, or if sites continue to offer pop-ups, may depend on whether our beleaguered gamer above has a strong reaction-either positive or negative-to pop-up campaigns.

The flood of pop-up impressions, defined as ads that spawn new browser windows and focus either in front or behind the active window, hit its high-water mark on niche website genres from January to July. Community, yellow pages, reference, fashion, personal expression, gaming, and comics websites all posted levels of popup advertising well above the market average of two percent (see Figure 1). Community and yellow pages sites went as far as selling more than ten percent of their ads as pop-ups. On the other end of the spectrum, broadly popular web genres such as portals, search engines, and shopping properties stayed clear of high levels of pop-up impressions, perhaps fearing the negative feelings pop-ups inspire in some consumers. Some sites such as iVillage have recently banished pop-up advertising from their pages, and now Earthlink is using the promise of full-time pop-up blocking software as part of their ISP subscription package.

Despite what seems like an endless supply of ads, only 9.2 percent of all companies advertising online used some form of pop-up from January to July. Demonstrating a high concentration, only 63 companies accounted for eighty percent of the total volume of pop-up impressions (see Figure 2). With a total of two percent of all online impressions going to pop-ups, the small number of advertisers who used pop-ups purchased them by the barrel.

Heavy spending on pop-ups brought a few industries to the forefront in the first half of the year. Hardware and electronics advertisers were the heaviest pop-up patrons, at just over six percent, and most likely skew that way because of the efforts of perennial pop-up powerhouse X10 Wireless Technologies. X10 has been at the center of much controversy surrounding pop-ups for the past year, as their ubiquitous ads not only spawn new browser windows that hide under the active window, but also feature racy and suggestive content. Despite these negative connotations, a recent MSNBC article by Lisa Napoli suggests that the privately held home automation retailer is alive, well, and continues to make plentiful use of the pop-up format.

Software advertisers led by Bonzi.com and its verbose purple simian utilized pop-ups for nearly five percent of all their impressions since January. Entertainment advertisers were right behind at 4.8 percent, and travel advertisers were next with 3.7 percent (see Figure 3). The retail industry, consistently led by marketing forces such as Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, eBay, Spiegel, and FTD, stayed far away from pop-up marketing, with only half a percent of their impressions going towards the medium.

In terms of sheer volume of pop-up impressions, X10 Wireless Technologies led all pop-up advertisers from January to July with just over one billion pop-up impressions for their Xcam (see Figure 4). Orbitz and Providian Financial both advertised over 680 million pop-up impressions in that same period, with Cassava Enterprises fourth with close to 550 million. Dell computer, with their plucky spokes-dude "Steven", rounded out the top five with about 450 million.

A few advertisers clearly view the benefits of pop-up advertising as greater than the potential harm to brand image, but a growing number of websites are addressing consumer concern by outlawing them. As pop-up share increases in the market, consumers will speak with their site visits. If website popularity declines as pop-up ad serving increases, then properties and advertisers may be forced to reconsider their use. The alternative is eventual consumer acceptance of pop-ups, and advertisers continued use of the medium as an effective marketing platform. For now, its hard not to have an opinion when a simple trip to the chat room turns into a competition of hand-eye-coordination versus the browser window close button.