The other topic of Internet advertising that we will talk about is pop-up ads.  “Pop up windows come in many different shapes and sizes, typically in a scaled-down browser window with only the Close, Minimize and Maximize commands”. (MarketingTerms, 2004)  “Pop-up window ads are becoming a new craze for Internet advertisers, due to the fact that they cost a lot more than the banner advertisements”. (Gibbs, 2004)  It is amazing how something that everyone views as an annoyance can make companies millions of dollars a year.  It is such a great deal for advertisers to sell pop-up ads, because the companies are not only making more money off of them, but they are making the money in a shorter amount of time.  The average length of time that a pop-up ad is displayed is much less than that of a banner ad.  A banner ad is viewed during the user’s entire length of viewing the site, while a pop-up ad can be viewed for only as long as it takes the user to close it out.

Another reason that companies have pop-up ads on their websites is that it doesn’t replace any of the traditional forms of advertising.  For example, if a website has banner ads it can also have pop-up ads.  In fact there are not many pages with pop-up ads that do not have banner ads as well.  The revenue that is generated from pop-up ads is only added to the revenue that is received from the traditional forms of advertising.  It does not take away from any of the previously existing revenue.  Unfortunately the advertisers and the companies hosting the websites seem to be the only ones benefiting from the use of pop-up ads, around 99% of the time the user does not.

            People do not enjoy being bombarded by unwanted advertisements while using the internet for their own personal needs.  Unexpected and unwanted ads can be distracting and utterly obnoxious.  Often times they have nothing to do with what you are currently looking at on the Internet, and some people may even find pop-up ads as invasion of privacy. 

A GartnerG2, a division of Gartner Inc., consumer survey of 2,667 Internet users conducted in July 2002 found that “78.9 percent of respondents called pop-up ads “very annoying” and 12 percent used ad blocking software (Gibbs 2004).”  It looks as though not only the users are angered by pop-up ads, but now it seems as though internet-service providers are fighting back by developing software.  Microsoft is one of the first ISP’s to provide pop-up blockers for their browser, Internet Explorer.  “What has really stimulated the discussion on the future of pop-up is the forthcoming release Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer with built-in pop-up suppression (Gibbs, 2004).”

On the other hand, we feel it is ethical to put cookies and pop-up ads of the same subject on various companies websites such as sister companies.  Then again it gets unethical when a similar unrelated company, which sells the same product, draws the patron to their site causing the first company to lose the sale on their product. “The greatest hostility to pop-up ads may be from enterprises that have established successful Internet businesses only to see visitors to their website be pulled away by a pop-up ad promoting a competitor’s product of service (New York Law Journal, 2004).”   This causes many companies to bring each other to court to try and settle these cases of basically stealing clients from one another.  We feel that the court case of 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. WhenU.com is a great example how pop-up ads are unethical.

“Some companies that have had their sites affected by a competitor’s pop-up ads have brought suit against both the competitor and the business that provides the software enabling the pop-up ads to appear, with varying success. One of the most recent decisions on this issue, by judge Deborah A. Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. WhenU.com, n2 granted a preliminary injunction. 1-800 Contacts complained that when a user typed in "www.1800contacts.com," the URL for its site, the SaveNow software recognized that the user was interested in the eye-care category, and a pop-up advertisement for Vision Direct appeared on the user's screen. Although the user could choose to disregard or close Vision Directs pop-up ad, if the user clicked on it, the main browser window [containing the 1-800 Contacts site] would be navigated to Vision Directs site. (New York Law Journal).”

           As you can see from this court case it was very unethical of Vision Direct to put a pop-up ad on 1-800 Contacts website.  We could not find the estimated amount of money lost from the pop-up ads, but there was probably a great deal of money that was lost by 1-800 Contacts due to the pop-up ads of Vision Direct.  We do understand that business is business, but this just does not seem as though anyone in their right mind would think that Vision Direct was practicing good ethical standards of business.

Cookies | Conclusion