Pop-ups give us marketers a bad name. It's because they aren't done correctly.
Ask anyone and they will, with certainty, tell you they have come across an annoying pop-up ad while browsing. Marketers aren’t exempt from the punishment either – we get them too. Even Ethan Zuckerman, the inventor of pop-up ads has publicly apologised for them.
What’s absolutely ridiculous is when there are more ads on the page than the content you want to see. That’s like going to see a James Bond movie and seeing a Heineken ad the whole time. I’m not talking about product placement. I’m talking about seeing the image of the beer over the movie – beyond annoying, right?
We pay to be online, it’s not for free. And when all we see are ads on a page, it’s just off-putting. This is why people resort to ad blockers. But this is not what we want either. There must be a better way to get people's attention.
So, what’s the deal with this bad user experience?
It might just freak you out, but Google knows a ton about you. To get a summary of your data go to your Google account, click the data & privacy tab and then on ad personalisation on that page. Here you will see a summary of how Google sees you.
Lazy marketers will run a very broad ad, and if you happen to slightly fit the demographic, you’ll see the ad. They also want to get those numbers so they will have GDN ads, popups and online spinning ads running at the same time (okay, I made up the last one). Some pages live off advertising, so naturally, they are going to maximise on that. Yolo, who cares about bounce rate.
What’s also important to note is that we have a lot of power in terms of what we see online. You can better organise your ad categories so an ad will have more meaning to you. If you happen to be in the market for a new car, Google can do the hard work for you by suggesting different brands. If you aren’t in the market and still see these ads, what’s that going to mean to you? Absolutely nothing.
Get on the path to better user experience
The answer lies in the data gold rush. Without context, a pop-up ad is meaningless. Data must be collected, stored and utilised in such a way that it can become valuable while requiring little maintenance.
It can be helpful to have all the names of those who have expressed interest in your business over the past 18 months. What if it was possible to know if a potential buyer was browsing, ready to buy, or had checked other critical boxes instead of bombarding poor Susie that doesn’t care about your brand at all? This is also why we stress the importance of segmenting your database.
We are not just referring to Google ads here. Paid media ads on social platforms are also very sophisticated and effective.
Pop-up ads do work. There are stats to prove it. But there is no point in getting the masses to your website, chilling there, then knocking off. You need a strategy, you need meaningful visitors that will turn into leads and then customers.
With a better understanding of your data and a better way to work, you can deliver the right message at the right time to the right people without wasting time or annoying online users. A more sophisticated targeting process also means ads are less interruptive and more informative. But this all starts with a well-built and thought-out website. It’s your home base. Let us run a check to grade your website for you so we can suggest how to improve it. This might involve better web design and development.
Don’t be an annoying pop-up advertiser. Do the right way. Let League Digital help you get on the right path to meaningful clicks.
