Too many pop-ups
Plus one more, all within 30 seconds.
Forum Discussion
Here’s some scholarly articles on why pop-up advertising is ineffective:
This has been known for decades, ever since Al Gore invented the internet in 1999. But business owners keep getting talked into using them by their MBA interns, who run an A/B test and collect some metrics to show that the conversion rate for adding pop-ups is greater than zero. And that is a Good Thing, so the A/B test becomes a new permanent feature. Then those MBA interns use that success to get a paying job elsewhere before anyone notes that the metrics plummet once customers realize that the pop-ups rarely offer them any value and they devise ways to suppress them or just habitually ignore them.
Then the business owner hires another MBA intern, who runs an A/B test that shows that flooding the customer with more pop-ups than before increases the interaction rate by a non-zero amount. The goalposts have been shifted, as “more effective marketing” now means “more people are clicking the buy button” rather than “more people are completing purchases.” Maybe it doesn’t show any proof of revenue growth, but surely that growth will come once they expand the A/B test to a broader audience.And that MBA intern takes that success and gets a better job elsewhere before anyone realizes that most of the growth in “buy” clicks were accidental because the pop-ups keep appearing a split second before the user clicked on their actual target. Maybe they actually had revenue growth, but only if they subtract the surge in customer refund requests.
The annoying interruption caused by opening the blocking App Store purchase confirmation dialog trains users to rapidly tap the corner of the screen to quickly dismiss the pop-ups as fast as possible without triggering an interrupting App Store dialog. Nobody is collecting metrics to see that the average time for viewing a pop-up dropped from 3000 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds. There is no metric for “customers have developed a level of cynicism towards the company such that they actively resist offers to buy stuff in all formats, not just pop-ups, because the pop-ups took away their sense of agency.” No MBA intern wants to risk their resume padding with a story of a time when they ran an A/B test to remove a feature that had shown past revenue growth and then nothing came of it. Their internship won’t last long enough to see the cynicism wear off in their most expensive customers — those hanging around but not buying anything — or to see those cynical customers replaced by new ones who never develop the cynicism because they weren’t inundated with pop-ups.
So the next wave of MBA interns have to figure out a way to discourage customers from successfully getting refunds for accidental purchases. They call this “purchase retention”, or something that sounds nicer than “legally ripped people off.” And on and on…
- Nair, T. (2017). Relevance of E-Permission marketing in today's Digital World. Dostupno na: https://www. researchgate. net/publication/317000220_Relevance_of_EPermission_marketi ng_in_today's_Digital_World.
- https://research.thea.ie/handle/20.500.12065/1060
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563214006827
This has been known for decades, ever since Al Gore invented the internet in 1999. But business owners keep getting talked into using them by their MBA interns, who run an A/B test and collect some metrics to show that the conversion rate for adding pop-ups is greater than zero. And that is a Good Thing, so the A/B test becomes a new permanent feature. Then those MBA interns use that success to get a paying job elsewhere before anyone notes that the metrics plummet once customers realize that the pop-ups rarely offer them any value and they devise ways to suppress them or just habitually ignore them.
Then the business owner hires another MBA intern, who runs an A/B test that shows that flooding the customer with more pop-ups than before increases the interaction rate by a non-zero amount. The goalposts have been shifted, as “more effective marketing” now means “more people are clicking the buy button” rather than “more people are completing purchases.” Maybe it doesn’t show any proof of revenue growth, but surely that growth will come once they expand the A/B test to a broader audience.And that MBA intern takes that success and gets a better job elsewhere before anyone realizes that most of the growth in “buy” clicks were accidental because the pop-ups keep appearing a split second before the user clicked on their actual target. Maybe they actually had revenue growth, but only if they subtract the surge in customer refund requests.
The annoying interruption caused by opening the blocking App Store purchase confirmation dialog trains users to rapidly tap the corner of the screen to quickly dismiss the pop-ups as fast as possible without triggering an interrupting App Store dialog. Nobody is collecting metrics to see that the average time for viewing a pop-up dropped from 3000 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds. There is no metric for “customers have developed a level of cynicism towards the company such that they actively resist offers to buy stuff in all formats, not just pop-ups, because the pop-ups took away their sense of agency.” No MBA intern wants to risk their resume padding with a story of a time when they ran an A/B test to remove a feature that had shown past revenue growth and then nothing came of it. Their internship won’t last long enough to see the cynicism wear off in their most expensive customers — those hanging around but not buying anything — or to see those cynical customers replaced by new ones who never develop the cynicism because they weren’t inundated with pop-ups.
So the next wave of MBA interns have to figure out a way to discourage customers from successfully getting refunds for accidental purchases. They call this “purchase retention”, or something that sounds nicer than “legally ripped people off.” And on and on…
