"The incentive for any given online marketer to do that is limited, just like the incentive for any given mass mailer is not very high to figure out who they shouldn't be sending mail to," he says. "It costs next to nothing to add pop-ups on your screen. Sure, J. Crew would know I want to see lots of detailed pop-up ads from them, but Sears couldn't care less that I hate their product and never want to hear from them again. They know I already hate them. They're not jeopardizing any relationship with me, so why should they care?"
As things stand, consumers can take steps to keep pop-ups off their screen by installing one of many anti-pop-up software programs readily available on the Web. Some, which can be downloaded for free, eliminate virtually all pop-ups. Others, which cost $20 or $30, give the user greater control in being selective as to the kind of pop-ups to be killed off.
"Basically, what a pop-up ad does is give instructions to your browser to do something special," says Croson. "What the pop-up-ad-killing software does is tell your browser to ignore those instructions. The downside is that pop-ups sometimes do good things. When you're at a brokerage website, you want that pop-up window to tell you your trade has been executed. So this kind of software does reduce the functionality of your browser."
Potential Regulation?
Reibstein says he believes it is possible that the federal government could step in to regulate pop-ups in the way it has taken steps to curb telemarketing calls and spam. Earlier this year, the government announced the creation of a website (www.donotcall.gov) that consumers could register with in order to have their names removed from telemarketing call lists. The Federal Trade Commission has also taken steps to halt fraudulent spammers.
"As we hear more concern about spam, pop-ups will get lumped together with spam and there will be negative reactions and calls for restrictions to be imposed ; it's around the corner," says Reibstein. "All marketers really want some self-regulation to happen. They'd prefer that rather than have government step in. I would be surprised if we do not see some strong efforts on self-regulation. If we don't do it, it's going to be done to us." One possible self-policing mechanism, Reibstein suggests, would be for producers of pop-ups to carry a kind of seal of approval.
But Wharton's Williams says that pop-ups, as annoying as they may be, do not typically lend themselves to fraud the way spam does, and she does not foresee any movement to curtail the use of pop-ups. "My sense is when it comes to advertising on the net, the government has its hands full controlling unwanted e-mails and spam, and I don't see them moving to set formats for other types of ads. Spam is considered much more problematic and the rate of fraud with those is much higher. My sense is that spam is a much bigger or noticeable problem for the government than pop-ups ads."
Hunter says that pop-ups are not an invasion of privacy in any meaningful sense and he doubts that regulators are interested in curbing their use. "I haven't seen either regulatory movements or consumer group concern," he says. "Though it's certainly a possibility, the response on the part of regulators to really serious net problems [such as spam and privacy issues dealing with the collection of information about consumers] has been fragmented, slow and mostly ineffective. I am doubtful that, if we can't fix spam and privacy intrusions, that we're going to see regulatory activity on this type of advertising."
Instead, it is more likely that advertisers themselves will come to see pop-ups as counterproductive. "Unlike spammers, most advertisers who use pop-ups need a better than a one-in-a-million response rate," Hunter notes. "So they'll need to find advertising mechanisms that are more about permission and less about destroying the user's experience of the website." Williams and Reibstein agree that the marketplace is the mechanism that tells marketers they had better use pop-ups carefully. According to Williams: "There's a movement in the marketplace to say, 'Maybe pop-up ads aren't right for us; if we continue to overload consumers with pop-up ads we may drive them away."
Says Reibstein: "One real danger is if people get annoyed [at pop-ups], they may not want to come to your website anymore. If you're running a website, you have to be careful as to how much you abuse your customers."
Spam, telemarketing calls and pop-ups are all examples of communications tools that irk people. But Hunter makes an interesting point that pop-ups are far less egregious and far less harmful to the technology that allows them to be deployed. Both spam and telemarketing involve the long-term "destruction" of a communications mechanism -- e-mail and telephones -- as a result of reduced transaction costs, he explains. As the financial costs of communication approach zero, the social cost becomes immense.
"You can't use your email account to get important mail, you don't want answer the phone at all anymore," Hunter says. "Pop-ups are intrusive, but they stem from a site that you're interested in. If The New York Times' site continues to besiege me with pop-ups when I'm reading their content, then I can switch to the Philadelphia Inquirer site. Competition means that some sites will gain a competitive advantage from not using pop-ups, and so the inevitable destruction of the resource is mitigated."
Croson notes that although pop-ups will not win many popularity contests, they may not be destined to disappear altogether. "Being annoying does not necessarily translate into bad advertising. Door-to-door sales people are pretty intrusive. Just because it's intrusive doesn't mean it can't be effective."
All materials copyright of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
