Pop-up ads never sell

By Franco O. Mendoza

for Saipan Tribune

Pop-up windows are getting more sinister! Newer pop ups are programmed into the web page itself; totally, uncontrollably covering the pages you were trying to read! These can be closed when they load up, yet not easily; they are animations integrated into the page’s flash programming (or the like), and forcefully place themselves smack in the middle of anything (if not everything) important below them.

When recently checking something on the web, a big whopper of a TV Guide subscription offer popped on screen, right in front of everything I was doing. To click it gone, you have to click daintily at this teeny-weeny “X” to the upper right of the box. Otherwise, you’re left with this commercial right in front of the whole left side of the web page. I rarely decide to facetiously tell a fellow entertainment site, how they should run their railroad. However, let’s just say this is annoying over-commercialism, and, quite frankly, I’m against it.

At least this new-age popup is not half as annoying as the recurring popup I see everywhere lately, for that “miniature camera.” You know the ad I’m talking about, attempting to sell a worthless, battery-powered pinhole-lens camera that isn’t half as good as a plug-in camera connected directly to your PC. So, why is this camera so worthwhile? This is what bothers me; some gangly female model is shown in the popup ad – often behind a keyhole – as if you could hide this camera (wink, wink!) …anywhere! For that matter, any allegedly “wireless” connection must be within just a few feet away, so can we just get rid of all these wireless camera ads… please?

Let’s be honest to the popup-commercial-happy web sites, though; keeping your web site afloat is tough, particularly if you’re trying to sell a web site, and not a product on the web. Selling a product on the web is a nice way to increase sales, from local to national proportions. So, how do you make a buck, as a web site? Pop-up commercials are used by some of the more myopic (and desperate) web developers, hoping that enough people will (accidentally) click on the pop-up and give you that extra 39 cents per click. It adds up… though by then, the people that now avoid your site like the plague have added up as well.

So, allow me to once again cut and paste my message to all web developers: pop-up window ads never sell. NEVER. Period. If they’re clicked on, it’s only because someone was trying to click on the window below them, when you threw an unexpected second window in front of their face. Aside from that, they don’t sell. They never sell.

(Franco O. Mendoza is the Webmaster of Verizon Micronesia.)