Revenue Optimization vs Pissing Visitors Off

[snarf]

Has anyone done any investigation into the correlation between the number/type of ads and how much traffic is lost due to the ads?

I've always been curious how far one can push pop-ups and such without losing significant amounts of traffic that would otherwise remain repeat visitors.

Any thoughts on this topic? Any data? Thanks.

[Kishin]

I feel using Pop unders,pop overs,spyware etc Is just not user friendly.Think of it like this,would you like to see all that junk if you went to a website? This may not affect Hits,visitors etc but it may give you a bad rep or Less happy users.I just dont want to irritate people thats all. I dont run more than 2 ads per page.This is just my opinion.
Anyway hope you find some data to get more info on this subject.

[Marubozo]

I put myself in my visitor's shoes. I know what type of sites tick me off, and those are sites with stupid flashy flash ads with sound, and those with popups and pop unders. Since these are the things that I dislike when I visit a site, I usually choose not to include these on my site.

But, again this depends on the type of site and your target audience. For me, I rely heavily on repeat visitors, so obviously, intrusive and annoying advertising can be detrimental for repeat traffic and ultimately, revenue. On the other hand, if your site has a large number of uniques that consist of people who are coming to your site for one thing and are not likely to return for a while, these types of ads may not have a negative impact at all on your visitors and revenue.

[aspen]

If I didn't run popunders I'd be losing a few thousand dollars a month. I can run popunders and limit them to a few times per session (usually 2 or 3).

I don't run popups, I don't run gambling ads, and I don't run overtly flashing banners. If I find a misbehaving popunder (spyware, doesn't want to close, spawns more windows) I complain to the network and disable the campaign.

[WealthStream]

Having one or two popups/popunders per session shouldn't do too much damage, but more than that can really drive your visitors away, and the more you have, the worse the effect will get (having 6 popups will be more than twice as bas as having three). Personally, I think it's best to play it safe and avoid launching more than one popup per user per day.

Another good rule of thumb is to space out image ads within your pages so that visitors can never see more than one of them at a time.

[Coldfire]

I have trippled the number of people that stay and play my online browser games by removing pop-up/pop-under/spyware ads from my site.

Keep in mind - I trippled it in two months

Does that tell you what you need to know? I am now (revenue wise) almost back to where I was when I had all the pop-up/pop-under ads. For me, they were bad news!

People are just sick and tired of pop-up ads. Even if they have pop-up blockers, the spyware gets them - and then they never come back to your site because they are cursing your name as they rebuild their computer. Yes - pop-ups generate easy revenue - and you might get away with one or two (if they are spaced out nicely), but I wouldn't bombard people with them - they won't forgive you for it

[funpage]

Spyware and popups are 2 totally different things.

People are just sick and tired of pop-up ads. Even if they have pop-up blockers, the spyware gets them - and then they never come back to your site because they are cursing your name as they rebuild their computer. Yes - pop-ups generate easy revenue - and you might get away with one or two (if they are spaced out nicely), but I wouldn't bombard people with them - they won't forgive you for it

[Wythrol]

Spyware and popups are 2 totally different things.

Not to your average webuser.