Popups Ditched by Ask Jeeves

The popular web search site, www.askjeeves.com has joined a growing number of online services providers and businesses who want to permanently dispatch unwanted and annoying "popup" advertisements to the recycle bin.

Ask Jeeves currently sells sponsored listings within search results to businesses, and also displays commercial listings from search engine, Google, and other online search providers. In addition, Ask Jeeves operates the Ask.com and Teoma.com sites. Ask.com displays algorithmic search results from Teoma.com, its sister company. Teoma allows marketers to pay to have a Web site indexed more frequently.

Popup ads, on the other hand, are advertisements which have been paid for (for the most part) by the advertisers to appear on a particular Web site. However, these popups appear automatically, as well as some banner advertising, when a user logs in to a particular Web site, and must be deleted in order to get to the material the user is seeking. Even more annoying is that popups often hype products or services totally unrelated to the user's interest, and multiple popups may appear during the user's visit to the site.

According to research conducted on Internet traffic patterns by Nielsen/NetRatings, the number of pop-up ads rose from about 3.9 billion in the first quarter of this year to nearly 5 billion in the second quarter, and their number has increased disproportionately with the downturn in the online advertising market. Web sites have apparently received an increasing number of complaints from their site users, asking that the popups be turned off. Ask Jeeves says that it will rely mainly on paid advertising links within search results for its sources of revenue and continuing growth. Ask Jeeves recently reported third-quarter earnings with a narrower net loss of $4.4 million on slightly higher revenues of $17.8 million.