[OT] For those who want to stop the annoying "messenger pop ups" for GOOD!

[MythosaAkira]

Why are popups any more evil than spam, junk mail, commercials at the beginning of movies, product placements in movies, telemarketing, commercials on TV, corporate names on stadiums, ads in magazines, circulars in newspapers, billboards in front of pine trees, or the millions of other ugly, invasive and coercive propaganda that begin to assail you the moment you wake up in the morning?

I don't know that anyone's claiming that popups are the most evil form of advertising, just that they're high on the list

Personally, I don't have a problem with advertising as long as it's not intrusive. I would put spam, pop-ups, telemarketing, and even commercials before movies in that category. They "get in my way" or inconvenience me in some manner. I find "passive" forms of advertising, such as magazine ads, tolerable because I can bypass them in the normal course of what I'm doing (in this case, turning pages in the magazine). You could argue the relative "passivity" of something, of course, so it's more a matter of taste. The definition also changes depending on whether something "passive" is also intrusive (like a big billboard on the side of the road which mars an otherwise interesting landscape).

I agree with you, though, for the most part. Too much advertising goes too far, and it would really be nice to avoid most of it. Or at least have enough people make it clear that certain things are simply intolerable. The likelihood of that happening is pretty low, unfortunately.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Banner ads are fine - they are essentially part of the content of a page, and the user controls whether they go to that page or not. Pop-ups (or pop-unders) violate what I consider to be a sacred rule: never initiate something the user didn't ask for.

The only problem with banner ads is that they generally don't work, people just don't click them. In general I blame this on bad matches between the item being advertised and the web site it is advertised on. (There used to be a gaming site I visited regularly that had banner ads for Revlon...)

Good matches, though rare, do end up with the banner being clicked. I do occassionaly click banners on this site, and there is one site ( www.theminiaturespage.com ) that I have clicked almost all the banners, amazingly enough having ads that target the proper audience works. But even at their worst banners are a passive annoyance, Pop-Ups on the other hand are almost as annoying as Spam.

There was also a recent study that showed that Pop-Ups actually made it less likely that someone would buy the product. I wish I could remember the link to that study, but basically it went through the response ratesto banners and surveys of how people dealt with E-vertising. (Less than half a percent on banner ads led to clicks, let alone sales.)

The Auld Grump, who at one point was receiving over two-hundred pieces of Spam a day....

 

[MythosaAkira]

The only problem with banner ads is that they generally don't work, people just don't click them. In general I blame this on bad matches between the item being advertised and the web site it is advertised on. (There used to be a gaming site I visited regularly that had banner ads for Revlon...)

Good point. Thinking about it, the only sites where I pay attention to the banner ads are ones where I've realized the ad content is relevent to that of the site.

There was also a recent study that showed that Pop-Ups actually made it less likely that someone would buy the product.

I can believe that. I actually was thinking about getting a small wireless camera awhile back, and while X-10 looked like it would have done the trick perfectly, I specifically decided not to buy anything from them due to their insidious "pop-under" ads.

(And my intended usage wasn't what their ads bill as "for fun" Those of you who've seen their ads know what I'm talking about...)

 

[Agamon]

Just to let everyone know, ever since I did this, any WinZip files I opened were empty. That kinda sucked...

Edit: Actually, my problem might be unrelated/coincidental to this.