Pop-ups, if you’re somehow, strangely, not familiar with
term, are those little windows that open when you visit certain sites.** Generation One - The Pop-Up
Until a few years ago, pop-up was considered biggest breakthrough in advertising on web.
When they were first introduced they were a great success and click-through rates went through roof.
Imagine being able to interrupt whatever your visitor was viewing, by launching a secondary window on top of browser window and drawing attention to your advertisement or subscription box.
But after a while - like most effective marketing tools - pop-ups started being abused.
A primary popup would open secondary pop-ups till eventually just visiting a page that has a single popup in it, could land you with a barrage of about 15 to 20 pop-ups.
Unscrupulous marketers exploited this to fullest, especially those hawking porn sites.
Frustrated visitors soon began complaining about pop-ups, and more considerate webmasters began to use cookies to ensure a pop-up was not shown more than once per visitor.
Pop-ups became such a nuisance that developers created popup blocking software.
These applications delete code that's trying to open a window - and BAM - it's bye bye popup.
** Generation Two - The Pop-Under
Not to be left behind, web marketers came up with another version, pop-under, which launched a secondary window under primary window.
In most cases, visitor didn’t even notice this pop-under until they closed primary window.
Although less intrusive, these were still a nuisance, and you don't get an award for guessing what happened next.
Right, pop-up blockers soon started blocking pop-unders as well.
** Generation Next - The Hover Ad
What beejeezus is a Hover Ad?
Well, it’s a floating window that popup blockers can't stop.
The technology that creates Hover Ads is not new. In fact, it’s been available to web designers for at least 2 years now as DHTML (Dynamic HTML).
Hover Ad are DHTML layers which can be selectively moved and displayed over primary page that's being displayed.
