Pop-up adverts are adverts which will literally appear onto the screen, out of nowhere, so that the web user’s attention is distracted from the website that they are browsing on and onto the advert (which will hopefully give the advert more chance of a click). However, there is a general stereotype around pop-up adverts that they are bad. They are bad for the web user and bad for the advertiser too. Nobody should be forced into having to look at an advert: the web user should choose to look at the advert at his or her’s own will as it is this interest that gains the most conversions. Here are some reasons why pop-up adverts are bad.
 

For the Web User, it’s an Unnecessary/Compulsory Distraction

As I have already briefly mentioned in the introduction to this article, the web user does not get a choice whether he or she wants to see the advert: it just appears. Web users love having full control when they are on the internet and for an advert to pop-up not at their own will is quite frustrating (which is why ad blockers are so popular).
As well as this, the majority of pop-up adverts are completely unrelated to the web user’s interests. Instead of being contextual like programs such as Adsense are, they, instead, just want to gain traffic the cheap and nasty way. Therefore, there is a stereotype around pop-up adverts that they simply just want clicks and are totally unrelated to anything on the web page the web user is browsing on.
 
 

For the Advertiser, low CTR and low Conversions

The reason why some advertisers choose to use pop-up adverts is because they believe that the exposure the advert gets from popping up will surely gain a much higher click through rate than traditional adverts….WRONG!
Pop-up advert’s CTRs are constantly declining due to more and more people just clicking off them because of the notorious reputation pop-up adverts have developed in general. The web user doesn’t want to waste a single second of time looking at an advert they did not choose to pop-up.
As well as this, if the advertiser is luckily enough to get a click from one of his or her’s pop-up adverts, it is unlikely that that source of traffic will result in a conversion. Pop-up adverts are kind of like banner advertising – the advertiser chooses the website for his or her advert to be displayed on. Considering they chose to create an advertising campaign on pop-up adverts, it is unlikely the advertiser is going to choose the right website to advertise on. Therefore, he or she will be paying for traffic that, at best, is a little bit interested in the contents of the landing page but not enough to gain that advertiser a conversion.
 
All in all, pop-up adverts are bad. The web user should always have control over what he or she views on the internet: not the advertiser. This is why PPC is such a great form of online advertising because it it lets the advertiser choose to show interest in the advert instead of forcing it onto them.