Pop-ups rear their ugly head

While surfing some popular media sites recently, I came across mediaweek.com, a site that reports the latest media news. But before I had a chance to dive deeper into one of their juicy stories, I was stopped in my tracks by a pop-up.

Although the abundance of pop-up ads have greatly diminished since the 1990s, I do occasionally still run across them. The standard pop-up barely causes me to pause because I know exactly how to get rid of it and continue my web surfing. This, however, was no ordinary pop-up.

This particular pop-up was an "invitation" from Nielsen//NetRatings to take a survey about the usability of the website (mediaweek.com). This was not your typical pop-up either. There was no convenient red "x" to close the window in the corner. In fact, the window was designed to look like part of the web site and you couldn't move it or get rid of it before answering yes or no to the "invitation".

This use of the pop-up angered me because it seemed to be a manipulation of the system. Not only did I become frustrated as I read over the ad to make sure I successfully clicked out of it without being subjected to any other annoying ads, but I also lost my interest in reading Mediaweek's stories.

While I understand the importance of gathering data about usability, this pop-up strategy is certainly not the way to go about it.