AdSense and PopUps

[ronin]

Hello. I don't like popups. Neither apparently does Google AdSense so it appears we're on the same side.

I have a very good popup blocker installed - almost too efficient for its own good - and, at a guess, I would say that the days of webmasters bringing in any meaningful revenue from popups are limited.

Let's just imagine though, that I had found a single popup campaign which was neither flashy, loud or annoying, but appropriate to my content and non-offensive. Hard to believe, isn't it? Bear with me.

Let's further imagine that the popup I'm considering using (and remember, I don't like popups) would not automatically spawn from the page in the browser, nor would it spring up after a click on that page.

In fact it would only come along, after a reader had opted to see a separate information panel, related to something on my page and then opted within that information panel (ie. a second time) to see an advert.

So when Google says in its Program Policies:

"Other types of pop-ups, pop-unders, or exit windows may be allowed, provided that they do not exceed a combined total of 2 per site"

What exactly does that mean?

a) 2 instances of code across the entire site?
b) 2 popups per user session?
c) 2 third-party sources providing popups?
d) Something else?

I'm asking here first just in case anyone has any experience on this issue. Otherwise I'll write to AdSense and see what they say.

[ScottM]

Writing AdSense seems to be a good start on any questionable method of serving up pop-ups. Any advice here would probably be speculation.

Concerning pop-ups:

Alexa has one of my sites showing pop-ups 2% of the time. Odd...I've never had anything like that on my site, ever. If Alexa is saying I have them, though I don't...trust me, AdSense will find them.

[ronin]

Of that, I have no doubt.

To date my relationship with AdSense has been entirely open and I certainly don't want to start hiding things from them.

I'd almost be happier if they said "no popups full stop, because then I wouldn't even toy with the idea... but the 'maximum of two' wording seems obscure.

At any rate, I prefer to play within the rules and not dance around interpretations and loopholes.

Okay, it seems that no-one here has already approached AdSense on the same matter, so I'll write to them and ask them what is allowed and what is restricted.

[ScottM]

Be sure to let us know what is ok and what isn't.

[RobbieD]

From my understanding they do not allow the AdSense code to be placed on the PopUPs themselves...

[gengar56]

ive never seen adsense in a popup and id be very surprised if google allowed it at all.

[Sharper]

Some mainstream commercial B2C sites I'm involved with use pop-ups in such a way that they set a cookie when the pop-up is shown so that the visitor is never shown another pop-up during that same session.

An example would be visiting large-clothing-maker's-site.com and getting a pop-up on the first page that men's signature shirts are 50% off that day. If you continue on more pages of the site, you get no more pop-ups.

Contrast that with joe's-casino-gambler's.com site where every page you go to, you see a pop-up advertisement, sometimes four or forty pop-ups per page, and you should be able to quickly grasp the concept that a visitor getting a total of "two" pop-ups on a site can be ok, but more than that quickly becomes something advertisers and Google don't want to be associated with.

[ronin]

Right. If it's two per site per user session, I'll be in the clear, because this popup has a 12 hour cookie on it, so even if a visitor comes back to the site twenty times or more within that twelve hours, they still won't see any more popups. I suppose this is only an issue because popups are such a controversial method of advertising. Furthermore, as I said, it's not an 'automatic' popup, you have to click for it - and the choice is left entirely in the hands of the visitor.

With all these explanations, I'm becoming more conscious of the massive amount of guilt I'm causing myself even by contemplating popups...

Are pop ups the dark side?

[jomaxx]

ronin, if the user is clicking to trigger a link that happens to come in the form of a popup window, I doubt that would be covered by Google's policy anyways. I'm pretty sure they must be referring to conventional popup ads and exit popups.

...although in the case you are describing, I'm not sure why a cookie is needed at all. Perhaps the user is taken to a certain page and a popup is ALSO triggered?

[Sharper]

I was scanning through the Adsense policies page again after this most recent terms and conditions update and thought of this old discussion when I saw the following change in the what a site may not include section:

"Pop-ups, pop-unders or exit windows that interfere with site navigation, obscure AdWords ads, change user preferences, or are for downloads. Other types of pop-ups, pop-unders, or exit windows may be allowed, provided that they do not exceed a combined total of 5 per user session."

So apparently they decided a clarification was in order.