Few Advertisers Employ Pop-Up & Pop-Under Ads.

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that only 9.2 percent of all companies advertising online use pop-up ads, despite its seemingly ubiquitous presence in 2002. Advertisers purchased and launched more than 11.3 billion pop-up ad impressions (including pop-under ads) for the first seven months of 2002, comprising just two percent of the online advertising market.

According to the Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance service, pop-up advertising is defined as any ad that spawns a new browser without user input, and includes pop-up ads that focus to the front or back (pop-under) of the active browser.

Niche categories such as community, yellow pages and games sites posted levels of pop-up advertising well above the market average of two percent, but broader categories such as portals, search engines and shopping sites shied away from utilizing the technology. Only a select few advertisers opted to use pop-up technology, with just 63 companies launching 80 percent of all popup advertising while the other 20 percent was split between 2,145 advertisers.

“Pop-ups quickly gained notoriety since their introduction in early 2001, with the ads attracting negative feedback from Internet surfers,” said Charles Buchwalter, vice president of client analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings. “Consumers may be surprised to find out that pop-up advertising comprises such a small percent of the total ad market.”

During the first half of 2002, advertisers used pop-up ads primarily as a direct marketing strategy, as opposed to employing pop-up ads to build brands. More than 6.5 billion impressions or 58 percent of all pop-up ads attempt to drive traffic to the advertiser’s site, while 26 percent offer incentives aimed at increasing sales (see Table 1). This indicates that 84 percent of all pop-up ads use a direct marketing tactic, much higher than the industry average of 64 percent.

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