Do not fear popunders.

March 22nd, 2007 by Chris

There is anecdotal evidence that popunders are bad for business. It is said, by many, that they turn away users in droves and that you’re losing out on both traffic and links by using them.

Well, that just isn’t true.

For most of March I turned popunders off on my literature site. Normally there would be around 3 per session, now, 0. Do you know what happened to my traffic? Nothing. Daily traffic was stable, and March looks to do right around the same as January & February.

Of course I cannot test if I’d gain more links over time by not using popunders. For one thing it’d be impossible because I could never have a control group, and if that weren’t enough there is no way I’d go without the revenue I gain from popunders for such a long time.

So for those on fence, I still recommend to use popunders on most content sites, 1 per session isn’t very annoying, those that really hate them probably block them anyways, and they can provide a good amount of revenue. For those who do see them, it apparently will not prevent them from using your site.

Of course I get the infrequent email from some individual upset about the ads on my site and swearing they’ll never use it again, but the statistics do not lie. I was receiving around 70 thousand uniques a day with or without popunders. There wasn’t even a small decrease.

No related posts.

Posted in: Ad Networks »  by: Chris

3 Responses to “Do not fear popunders.”

  1. Max  Says:
    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:48 pm

    Good – I can’t bring myself to removing popunders; the revenue just can’t be ignored.

  2. Marc  Says:
    March 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm

    Hi Chris,

    Just wondering what networks you suggest for pop-unders and what kind of cpm rate you think is normal or acceptable. I have never run pop-unders my self for exactly the reason you say is not a real problem statistically. I have always worried about pissing my users off with pop-unders.

  3. Chris  Says:
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:40 am

    Tribalfusion has the best rates of the networks I use, but they have rather limited inventory.

    Casale & Fastclick are very close in all network aspects, but don’t have as high of rates.

    I signed an individual agreement with a company called Adnet Interactive (owned by MediaWhiz, which owns Text Link Ads) and they’ve been buying my 1st impression popunder at a rate higher than Casale or Fastclick’s but lower than TribalFusion, but with unlimited inventory, so thats nice. But they’ve been paying extremely slow. (supposed to be Net 30 and I’m still waiting for January).

    There is also Burst, which can get good rates, not as good as TF, but better than the others, but their inventory is also small and they too have some really low rates in their network.

Leave a Response








(Email field must be filled in)

Top of page...