Pop-ups are about to get a lot more offensive

Pop-up ads may seem like they're everywhere, but they account for only a small portion of online advertisements, according to a new study.

During the first seven months of this year, pop-up and pop-under ads accounted for just two per cent of all online advertising impressions, according to a study released yesterday by Nielsen//NetRatings. However, more than nine per cent of all companies that advertise online are now using such ads, including household names such as Dell, Morgan Stanley and Providian Financial.

Online advertisers served 11.3 billion pop-up and pop-under ad impressions in the first seven months of 2002, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. About 58 per cent of those impressions were used to drive traffic to a particular website, while 26 per cent were aimed at boosting sales through use of incentives. Just 13 per cent of pop-up and pop-under advertisements were used to build brand awareness.

With the effectiveness of the once-standard banner ad being questioned, advertisers have been experimenting with increasingly eye-catching online ads, among them pop-ups. Once known only on fringe and porn sites, pop-ups have been gaining popularity among mainstream advertisers - though not with surfers.

Despite their notoriety, pop-ups are here to stay, and growing numbers of advertisers will likely use them, financial analyst Safa Rashtchy with USBancorp Piper Jaffray, said in a report this week.

"We believe that as the online audience expands and becomes more mainstream, there will be higher tolerance of the pop-ups. We believe most consumers would rather see advertising than pay for content, as many studies have shown," Rashtchy wrote in his report. "Pop-ups are not for everyone, but we believe they are for the majority."

Troy Wolverton writes for News.com