In a report issued on Thursday, Jupiter Media Metrix said that pop-under ads are able to generate wide reach, but are mostly ignored by Internet users.
The study found that as many as three-fourths of Internet users tune out intrusive pop-under ads, which have in recent months been adopted by several large Internet sites including MSNBC.com and The New York Times.
The New York research firm studied the results of X10.com, one of the most aggressive marketers using pop-under ads. Jupiter Media Metrix estimated that between January and May 2001, X10.com reached 32.8 percent of the Web's entire audience with its pop-under ads - in other words, about one-third of all surfers during that period were served an X10 ad. However, the study said, 73 percent of those who were served an X10 ad left its site or closed the pop-under window within 20 seconds.
"As advertisers become increasingly intrusive online, consumers react just as they do with their TV remote control - they eliminate advertising they don't find relevant or entertaining," said Jupiter Media Metrix analyst Marissa Gluck in a statement.
Jupiter Media Metrix also studied other companies that have deployed pop-up or pop-under ads - including BizRate.com, Colonize.com, Half.com and Real.com - each of which found "significant" increases in the number of unique visitors to their sites. However, while Jupiter Media Metrix continues to include traffic from pop-up and pop-under ads in its overall traffic statistics, the firm cautions that it is "impossible to determine" whether a user intended to visit a site or whether the visit was the result of a pop-up or pop-under advertisement.
