• The New York Times, Monday, December 11, 2006 10:32 AM

Advertisers beware: some publishers are now artificially inflating their traffic numbers by aligning with adware firms that pop their articles up when users surf the Web. Entrepreneuer.com is the example cited by the New York Times, which found that the site was able to triple its reported traffic due to news pop-ups.

The fact that some publishers are willing to distribute their content as news-pops underscores how fierce the attention is for eyeballs and ad dollars on the Web. To say the least, news pop-ups are an aggressive step to get people to consume your content.

Ben Edelman, a spyware researcher and Harvard Law doctoral candidate, says Concierge.com, ForbesAutos.com, Entrepreneur.com and Heavy.com all have used pop-ups for content.

Scott Symonds, vice president for media at Agency.com, said publishers of high-quality content should have the good sense not to let adware partners distribute their content via pop-ups. Pop-ups in this sense are Web pages that were never requested by the user, but just show up as they're surfing the Web. Ad-supported software firms like Zango install such software.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »