Viral marketing spreads
PassThisOn, which encourages visitors to share such tidbits as dog animations and cow pictures, boasts of its own standing with several media measurement companies. It touts such recognition as "the fastest growing site on the Web" from PC Data and "top newcomer" from Jupiter Media Metrix on the top of its site.
"There's good publicity in having large traffic numbers," The Yankee Group's Mitrovich said. "What lies behind that is the implicit assumption that you'll sell more advertising."
That principle has critics questioning the validity of multiple windows counted as impressions, calling them the online equivalent of empty calories because they do not necessarily measure a potential consumer's interest. They point to such statistics as the average time visitors spent on JobsOnline in December: about 2.6 minutes, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. That stands in marked contrast to the 22.9 minutes reported by second-place career site Monster.com.
"The online advertising and marketing business so far has been built on getting very large, very quickly. This mind-set is ingrained in Web entrepreneurs that bigger is better, so you can claim king of the mountain, make more money, and get more funding," Mitrovich said. "But the traffic seems unqualified."
Wallace countered that PassThisOn's traffic has grown purely from what's
known as "viral marketing," a term used to describe the swift spread of
information online
PassThisOn has "earned its traffic," Wallace said
Wallace said his site is being victimised by a "typo squatter," a person or company that has registered various misspellings of Web addresses. In Wallace's case, a company called Pointcom.com has registered the name "PassThiOn.com" (missing an "s") that also launches multiple windows when someone tries to exit the site.
"Usually these are not reputable companies...I'm about to start taking legal action," Wallace said.
Pointcom did not return phone calls for this article.
Like Wallace, JobsOnline President Tony Priore defends the browser tactics and says the company is already profitable.
"We may use hooks as promotions, but I don't think that's a bad thing," said Priore, a former executive at e-mail marketing service Yesmail.com.
JobsOnline, which does not disclose any of its affiliate relationships, has a business model that differs markedly from those of other employment-focused Web sites. Unlike Monster.com and HotJobs, the site doesn't charge listing fees but makes money through advertising and marketing to its job seekers. When visitors sign up with the service, they must opt in to receive third-party promotions.
"You can run a Super Bowl ad and that can add up to nothing," Priore said. "These are legitimate tactics that are used in marketing."
Still, Priore said that evaluating the technique of multiple-window launching is one of his charters as president.
"If enough people find it annoying, we'll probably find a different way to generate revenue," he said.
At least some design professionals think that would be a wise idea. Those like Joshua Ulm, director of interactive design studio IoResearch, say that launching multiple windows won't catch on because consumers' desire for privacy will eventually prevail.
"Throwing something up there that the visitor didn't ask for is
unprofessional
