Google and Pop-ups on destination sites

[Opie1Canopie]

We serve exit pop-up surveys on several of our sites and in the past, Google has declined our ads because of the "no pop-up" rule.

Has anyone successfully argued their way out of this rule? Our pop-up surveys are by no means advertisements and we think they are a legitimate way of doing user research.

Any opinions on this? Suggestions?

Thanks.

[skibum]

Opinions dont seem to matter much when it comes to Google policies. I think the rule is no popups & its not negotiable.

[Shak]

many large advertisers who serve pop-ups just disable them for adwords users, quite simple if you log to a database where the traffic is coming from

Shak

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Opinions dont seem to matter much when it comes to Google policies. I think the rule is no popups & its not negotiable.

Well, this is both not correct, and correct. ;)

There is actually some 'wiggle room' built into many policies, and you are always able to 'make your case' if you feel that an ad has been disapproved incorrectly. Specifically, you may respond to the disapproval email, explain why an exception should me made, and request another review in light of your new information.

skibum is correct, however, in that the pop up policy is one for which exceptions are not made.

AWA

[eWhisper]

The no pop up rule is for the landing page. According to the TOS, there is no rule about pop ups on other pages in your site (unless this rule has been modified and the Guideline page not modified).

[PCInk]

The trouble with pop-ups is often a visitor can visit your site from the AdWords and sometimes that will trigger a pop-up. Other times it is an exit pop-up and will appear when you click the back button back to Google.

The user often has no idea which site this pop-up came from - Google do not want to be tarnished with the 'I dont use Google because of all the pop-ups'.

You may need to rethink your strategy anyway - lookup Windows XP Service Pack 2 regarding pop-ups.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

The no pop up rule is for the landing page. According to the TOS, there is no rule about pop ups on other pages in your site (unless this rule has been modified and the Guideline page not modified).

This is almost entirely correct, but I'd add one thing: pop-ups may not occur when entering or leaving the site.

Quoting from the Editorial Guidelines @ [adwords.google.com...] (with the quoted section being towards the bottom of the page):

No Pop-ups

We do not allow links to landing pages that generate pop-ups when users enter or leave your landing page. We consider a pop-up to be any window, regardless of content, that opens in addition to the original window.

The 'any window' notation is important by the way, as the policy also covers pop-unders.

BTW, for easy reference, there is also a link to the Editorial Guidelines at the bottom of every page in your account.

OK, I am going to devolve into the world of opinion here for a moment (so, perhaps avert your eyes!), and agree with PCInk, who says:

You may need to rethink your strategy anyway...

I have not looked at the service pack PCInk referenced, but spending a vast number of hours on the Internet every week, I do know that I have developed a pop-up phobia - and I'll do my very best to avoid sites that have delivered one to me. And I supsect that others may feel the same.

Again, just my $0.02.

AWA

[Opie1Canopie]

Thanks All -

I will have to have further conversations with our market research team about your comments -

I personally dislike pop-ups so I'd be happy if we did not use them - but what keeps the program going is that our users do not seem to mind and we have 50,000+ responses to the survey on one site alone...plus over 60% of the respondents are opting in to future communication from us.