Regular readers will know that I dislike pop-up ads on web sites. But I hate the new breed of pop-up ads that go to the effort of breaking through pop-up blockers and insist on showing me pop-ups even though I have explicitly said that I don’t want to see them.
You’ll also know that I have a soft spot for the Guardian web site as the nice people who run it generally like to do the right thing when it comes to the necessary evil of ads. Yes, they run pop-ups, but they are usually well behaved pop-ups that are blocked by Firefox.
So I was surprised and more than a little disappointed when I was browsing the site just now and a pop-up… er… popped up. It was an advert for HP, if anyone’s interested in boycotting companies.
I’m noticing a few popups getting through the Firefox blocker too these days. Annoying.
Oh yes. “Super pop-ups”[1] have been around. My point is that using them indicates a lack of professionalism (or, alternatively, a certain desperation in chasing advertising revenue!)I’m sure that this is just a rogue advertiser that has slipped a dodgy ad past GU (or, more likely, GU’s advertising supplier) but it reflects badly on the site and they need to be more careful in the future.[1] Not sure if anyone other than me uses that term.
I think they’re actually called über-popups. Or pop-übers.
You’ll be wanting to pay for their ad-free site then :-)http://www.guardian.co.uk/adfree/subscribe
No I won’t!
Hey Dave – don’t know about this, isn’t supposed to happen, will chase. Any more info on what the ad was actually for? And you’re not using some weirdo proxy that makes our geotargetting software think you’re in Lapland, are you?