Pop-ups, if you’re somehow, strangely, not familiar with the
term, are those little windows that open when you visit certain
sites.
** Generation One - The Pop-Up
Until a few years ago, the pop-up was considered the biggest
breakthrough in advertising on the web.
When they were first introduced they were a great success and
click-through rates went through the roof.
Imagine being able to interrupt whatever your visitor was
viewing, by launching a secondary window on top of the browser
window and drawing attention to your advertisement or
subscription box.
But after a while - like most effective marketing tools -
pop-ups started being abused.
A primary popup would open secondary pop-ups till eventually
just visiting a page that has a single popup in it, could land
you with a barrage of about 15 to 20 pop-ups.
Unscrupulous marketers exploited this to the fullest, especially
those hawking porn sites.
Frustrated visitors soon began complaining about pop-ups, and
more considerate webmasters began to use cookies to ensure a
pop-up was not shown more than once per visitor.
Pop-ups became such a nuisance that developers created popup
blocking software.
These applications delete the code that's trying to open a
window - and BAM - it's bye bye popup.
** Generation Two - The Pop-Under
Not to be left behind, web marketers came up with another
version, the pop-under, which launched a secondary window under
the primary window.
In most cases, the visitor didn’t even notice this pop-under
until they closed the primary window.
Although less intrusive, these were still a nuisance, and you
don't get an award for guessing what happened next.
Right, the pop-up blockers soon started blocking pop-unders as
well.
** Generation Next - The Hover Ad
What the beejeezus is a Hover Ad?
Well, it’s a floating window that popup blockers can't stop.
The technology that creates Hover Ads is not new. In fact, it’s
been available to web designers for at least 2 years now as
DHTML (Dynamic HTML).
Hover Ad are DHTML layers which can be selectively moved and
displayed over the primary page that's being displayed.
Although they use JavaScript coding, they don’t require the
opening of a new window. Pop-up blocking software are fooled
into thinking they are part of the same window, so they are
unable to block them.
Hover Ad can be animated, moved around, made to appear once per
session, shown after a delay, and more.
These ads don’t work with older versions of Internet Explorer.
But since most netizens use browsers with IE 4.0 and above, that
are capable of displaying this code, this sort of advertising is
being used more often.
So, you may ask "Why should I switch from regular pop-ups to
Hover Ad?"
The most compelling reason is that your pop-ups can be, and are
being blocked! Hover Ads can't.
Anyone who uses the Google and Alexa (ten million users)
toolbars is most probably NOT seeing your popup right now.
The Netscape 7.0 Browser (almost 52 million users) has a built
in popup blocker.
Earthlink (five million users) provides its users with a popup
blocker.
AOL (35 million subscribers) has released version 8.0 with Popup
Blocking capabilities.
At least 40 million internet users will never see your
advertisement!
You could be losing out on a lot of new subscribers and
potential revenue right now.
"So how do I add Hover Ads[TM] to my website?"
For the do-it-yourself-er there are freely available JavaScript
snippets that you can put to use on your site today without
buying any fancy software. A sample of code can be obtained from
CodeLifter.com. The drawback here is that you need in-depth
knowledge of JavaScript coding.
Another approach is to use high end HTML editors like
Dreamweaver, which have DHTML scripts included under the
"Layers" menu. But again, Dreamweaver is an expensive software.
If pop-ups are a big part of your online marketing strategy -
and if you have noticed a recent drop in your subscriptions,
sales and profits, you can be pretty sure that your visitors are
not seeing your pop-ups anymore.
But now at least, you know you can do something about it - and
soon.
About the author:
About The Author Satyajeet Hattangadi is the Owner of Novasoft
Inc( http://www.novasoft-inc.com), a software solutions
provider, makers of Hover Ad Generator -that creates popup
blocker proof, rich media animated ads in under a minute
