Unwanted Popups Boosting Web Traffic 118
Most of us have experienced popups used for advertising. Now, some adware companies and advertiser networks are using popups (mostly from programs that users did not want installed) to directly boost traffic numbers for their customer Web sites. Net rating and measurement companies try to detect and discount such inflated traffic numbers, with mixed success.
Use an OS that has a lot less of these problems... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Unwanted what-now? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm surprised... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm surprised that it took this long for advertisers to figure out that popunders/popups increase traffic. Back around 2000 when I was working for dot-coms, the ad-revenue based groups lived and died by traffic ratings (unique page impressions, etc) like Jupiter Media Metrics. When popunders started to reach critical mass, x10.com was pushed from nowhere into the top 5 -- overnight. I'm sure it cost them a pretty penny, but the result was evident over 6 years ago.
Let's hope that advertisers take another 6 years to catch onto the next big thing.
Re:I have said it before! (Score:3, Informative)
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.
Measure anything human activity with statistics and it can be fudged and defrauded.
In this case, I think the more accurate measure would not be "web hits" but rather a measure of average time visiting said site. A pop-up ad is visted perhaps 1.2 seconds, while a legitimate site much longer, statistically speaking. Average clicks once on a site is another possible measure. Refering site is another item that can be used to uncover fraud.
I think a broader measure of other statistical information would be much more revealing than simple clickthroughs and impressions.
Re:Unwanted what-now? (Score:3, Informative)
See http://adblockplus.org/ [adblockplus.org] and http://adblockplus.org/en/faq_project#filterset.g [adblockplus.org]
Re:Pop-up blocker? (Score:2, Informative)
Chronologically speaking:
- the pop-up window is created,
- that new window requests data from the target URL
- and finally displays the data.
If you're ignoring/blocking scripts, the code to create a new window is not executed meaning that we never get to step #2.Re:Unwanted what-now? (Score:2, Informative)