Hello!

I have been trying different marketing techniques for my new web hosting company and I just learned of an advertising medium that interests me. I want to start by saying that I do not like the idea of pop-up ads very much, and I would never put them on my company's site. However, there are companies out there that offer thousands of quality visitors to your site for a very reasonable cost - at least compared to ppc. For example, 10,000 unique visitors for $59. The way they do this is by having my site pop up UNDER a partner's site when a visitor exits it. They claim to offer targeted marketing and I am just wondering if anyone out there has used this type of advertising? I wonder how effective something like this would be because for me, I usually close pop-under windows. This is not an ad, my actual site home page would pop under the page.

Has anyone had experience with this adversiting medium? Does it work?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
David Harris
WorldWIdeHosting.net

My guess would be that most internet-saavy people (the type of people you'd be targetting) close pop-under ads as soon as they see them.

Anything I don't ask for I close out without giving it a second thought lol.... Popups/unders are evil :stickout

We just tried it. Got a lot of traffic but no signups from it. We get all our orders from host search directories. Focus your efforts there :)

Yes, I agree that most people would close those windows. It just seems to me that with 10k visitors someone would signup. After all, isn't it just a numbers game? I would think that by offering the right message to a targeted audience (somewhat targeted, at least) that someone would have to respond. Take spam for example - I would never do it, but with all of the efforts spammers are making, they must be making some money.

I havent had the best of luck with the host directories. Perhaps I am expecting too much too fast, who knows.......

netsolutions - thanks for the reply. How many visitors did you purchase?

Thanks again for the info!!


Regards,
David

Originally posted by David-WWH
Yes, I agree that most people would close those windows. It just seems to me that with 10k visitors someone would signup. After all, isn't it just a numbers game? I would think that by offering the right message to a targeted audience (somewhat targeted, at least) that someone would have to respond. Take spam for example - I would never do it, but with all of the efforts spammers are making, they must be making some money.

I havent had the best of luck with the host directories. Perhaps I am expecting too much too fast, who knows.......

netsolutions - thanks for the reply. How many visitors did you purchase?

Thanks again for the info!!


Regards,
David
We purchased 10,000 and got no extra signups from it.

Keep in mind these are full page popups.

Those 10,000 people are not looking for hosting at that moment. You may get customers from those ads, but not instantly. If you want customers faster, then WH directories are the way to go.

Sounds like what porn sites do.....

I ALWAYS close pop-ups, and I don't look at them. Infact, if I do get one, I make a point not to buy anything from them (like thoes cameras).

Oh the beauty and ease of Opera; F12 --> Refuse Pop-Ups --> go on surfing.

Marketing efforts through pop-ups/unders/overs/wherevers are wasted efforts, in my humble opinion. With the persistent development of pop-up refusing software, one would think their lives as advertising tactics are short lived.

Jeff

mozilla:

Allow unrequested windows to load [UNCHECKED]

wheee :D

bear in mind that 10,000 "visitors" is not really "10,000" visitors at all - it is only 10,000 pop-unders - sure your page is displayed on their browser - but is it really a visitor?

I think most people hate that kind of rubbish - it may have some value if you have some high "sales pitch" type of deal where you want to grab the attention of somebody & make them read more - over 10,000 people you may get one or two people that look a little closer - but hosting? - doesn't seem to be any fit at all to that type of approach.

To be honest - I think that approach is not only a waste of money, but makes your company look cheap & un-professional.

But...of course you never know until you try.

Just my 2 cents

Network Solutions is advertising with pop unders extensively right now. It must be working or they wouldn't be spending 1000's of dollars per day with this program. The CPM you were quoted is ok but I would try to lower that rate by increasing the buy or commiting to another run next month.

-Mike

Network Solutions is a little bit different a scenario though - this will be just one element of a major marketing budget spend that runs into tens of thousands of dollars, with steep discounts on each impression or pop-up.

They may run millions of these pop-unders, together with banners, ads etc etc. With enough volume there is bound to be a % of signups. Also their service is not an on-going thing - it is just a one off domain registration with little ongoing customer interaction & they have a branded name already - so people are more trusting of it.

Compare that to buying 10,000 pop-unders for $59.

For $59 - maybe it's worth a try, just to see what happens - but my guess is that the ROI will be not be very interesting.

It's possible to buy about 300,000 semi-targetted banner ads for $60 - that might be a better option. Volume is the key & 10,000 is pretty low.

Where is the best place to buy 300,000 (or any number) of banner ads for a new search engine?

Thanks in advance

Popunders work, you just have to get them cheap enough. I run a popunder selling site, and the defaults go to my hosting. I've gotten a few signups that way, one woman put for how she found the site "screen saver". I thought that was pretty funny :)

Originally posted by David-WWH
This is not an ad, my actual site home page would pop under the page. Just an aside, first: unless your site's home page is especially geared toward closing a sale -- which most aren't -- that's probably not what you want. Consider creating a special landing page to be used in your popunder campaign.

Other than that, I'd echo what's already been said. While technically these are "visitors" most of them visit for only as long as it takes to close the window. And to say they're "quality visitors" is something hard to quantify. None of them are visitors who chose to see your site, wouldn't that be "quality?"

That's why...a very reasonable cost - at least compared to ppc....you're comparing apples to oranges. PPC visitors actually clicked through. Unless you used a "bait and switch" approach or otherwise tricked them to do so, that makes them a much more targeted group than any popup distributor can offer.

I close pop unders from the menu bar so I don't even look at them....

and by the way I don't think in general that it's a good way to reach customers in this business.

I may be wrong though :)

agreed, my opera (much love) puts popups in the background and i close them from the tab, never once having seen them (unless i expect a popup for functional purposes, such as on c2it's website).

paul