Policy Change: Survey Popups

[JustineR]

We have changed our policy on popups. We continue to disallow regular advertisements in popup form, but we are going to begin to accept survey popups that accompany advertising campaigns on the site. These surveys are becoming a standard in the industry, and our advertisers depend on them to measure the performance of their marketing efforts. As an advertiser-supported site, we want and need to do business with these advertisers, and support their efforts as they are supporting ours. And, we feel that the popup surveys are significantly less intrusive than many other forms of advertising that we do not allow.

If you encounter any technical problems, please let us know by replying to this thread on Technical Help: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/496072 and we will investigate.
Thanks,
Justine, Product Manager for Chowhound

[jfood]

sure they are annoying. Jfood does the same thing he does for phone surveys. Either he clicks/says "No thank you" or he hangs up the phone which is the equivilant to clicking the little "x" in the box.

[nosh]

It is complete B.S. and incorrect to assert that you need survey responses of any kind, including pop-ups, to measure the effectiveness of an ad. That is just the lazy way out, and is inaccurate anyway. The way to measure anything is in the result you desire -- sales.

[im_nomad]

out of curiosity, does anyone ever actually click on these things? The only time i have ever clicked on anything resembling a pop-up is when they are the extra annoying kind that follow your mouse pointer around the screen and make you accidentally click there instead of where you'd intended.

[Jacquilynne]

My understanding is yes, they do -- we weren't getting sufficient survey responses to satisfy our obligations when we were only running the survey invitations in the regular ad locations, which is why the pop-ups unfortunately had to be enabled. We dislike them, too, and we'd like to not have to, but we are an advertising supported site, and we do have to meet our obligations to our advertisers.

[Miss Needle]

I realize you are an advertisement supported site and need to have pop-ups to meet your numbers. But as I said before, when the site is slow, you have pop-ups popping up every few minutes. It's really a frustrating experience and will turn off a lot of posters. I do understand spreading out your pop-ups among all the posters. But I think you really need to make sure that a person doesn't get more than one pop-up per hour or so.

[chocchipcookie]

They are distracting and frustrating!! Such a nusence! Especially the talking ones and the ones that block my thread before I can read it. PLEASE tone them down!

[moh]

GGGRRRRRR! Hate the popups! PLease stop them!!!!!

[paul balbin]

between your hi tech pop ups and junkyard dog moderators I feel that Chowhound is on a real
down hill slide.

[jen kalb]

ive replied to a couple of these useless popups - well, the things continue to pop up but when I click on them they often close the window - or sometimes the demographic page opens, I click and then it closes the window. these things are are incredbly buggy -please get these fixed or get rid of them.

[Miss Needle]

Please see my complaint on this thread:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/5640...

[wasny]

Very annoying. The page layout is already plenty cluttered and distracting with the ad column on the right. I for one certainly don't appreciate an obstruction swimming in and covering what I'm reading.

The idea that these "popup surveys are significantly less intrusive than many other forms of advertising" isn't really a valid argument for adding them to your site. Basically you're saying: Things could be worse, so be happy with what you get.

[Fig Newton]

That survey just crashed my browser (Firefox 2.0.0.12). I'll never click on a survey here again.

[Servorg]

Will these pop up "surveys" appear ONLY while we are logged ON to the site?