• by Masha Geller , September 4, 2002

With all this talk about things that go pop on the screen, you may be surprised to find that only 9.2% of all companies advertising online use pop-up ads. That’s according to Nielsen//NetRatings’ most recent release, which states that advertisers purchased and launched more than 11.3 billion pop-up ad impressions (that includes pop-unders) for the first seven months of 2002 -- that’s just 2% of the online advertising market.

According to the release, pop-up advertising is defined as any ad that spawns a new browser without user input, and includes pop-up ads that focus to the front or back (pop-under) of the active browser.

Niche categories such as community, yellow pages and games sites posted levels of pop-up advertising well above the market average of 2%, but broader categories such as portals, search engines and shopping sites shied away from utilizing the technology. Only a select few advertisers opted to use pop-up technology, with just 63 companies launching 80% of all pop-up advertising while the other 20% was split between 2,145 advertisers.

During the first half of 2002, advertisers used pop-up ads primarily as a direct marketing strategy, as opposed to employing pop-up ads to build brands. More than 6.5 billion impressions or 58% of all pop-up ads attempt to drive traffic to the advertiser's site, while 26% offer incentives aimed at increasing sales. This indicates that 84% of all pop-up ads use a direct marketing tactic, much higher than the industry average of 64%.

Not surprisingly, X10 continues to lead all pop-up advertisers with more than one billion pop-ups launched in 2002, beating out the next advertiser by nearly 50%. Orbitz came in second with 687 million pop-up ad impressions, while Providian Financial employed 679 million impressions during January through July 2002. Cendant purchased and launched 561 million pop-up ad impressions, and Cassava Enterprises posted 548 million impressions, rounding out the top five.