It seems the infestation that is pop-up/under advertising is here to stay -- at least for now -- but could we at least use a little restraint?

Here's an idea: Don't put them on your home page!

It's seriously interfering with my ability to set my own browser's home page. I can't tell you how many different sites I've gone through in the last year trying to get away from the dreaded pops. (I typically have between five and twenty browser windows open at any given time so I really can't deal with closing an ad every time I open a window.)

As a news junkie, my home page is always set to a major news site, but it's getting harder and harder to find one that won't at least periodically corrupt its home page with the pops. In my recent campaign for findable online corrections, I looked at sites of the top 100 U.S. newspapers and by the time I finished, I had to close 33 pop-up/under ads.

That's 33! And who knows how many of those sites only trigger the pops every n^th time.

And only two organizations -- L.A. Times and Kansas City Star -- had the integrity to claim their ads by putting their names in the title bar. Shame, shame, shame on the rest of you! If you are going to make the decision to subject your readers to this intrusive form of advertising, at least stand behind your decision. Call me Pollyanna, but I believe it demonstrates highly questionable moral character to take an advertiser's money for this service and then just throw the ad out there and hope your users won't trace it back to you.

P.S. For everyone who's thinking, 'why doesn't she just use software to block the pops herself?!': As someone who studies human interaction with the Web, I refrain from indulging because I want to know what average users are experiencing, and I don't believe most have such software installed. (And no, I don't go so far as to use dial-up regularly -- I'm not crazy -- but I think my occasional wireless PDA surfing is slow enough to qualify.)

March 8, 2003