[notdanariely]

Well, it kinda is the price of visiting the internet. Because most content is free but ad-supported... doesn't that mean viewing ads is the price you pay? (At least in a large sense -- I'm intentionally ignoring adblock technology because as of right now it's just not that significant)

[JoeAltmaier]

"Most of the Internet" is Netflix (by bandwidth). They charge for their services, and have zero popups or ads.

The rest of the Internet is pay-to-play like Steam. At least for me.

[Alupis]

> At least for me.

You are not the average internet user.

Your biases do not apply to 99% of internet users. The things on websites that annoy you do not annoy 99% of internet users. The marketing antics that work for 99% of internet users do not work on you.

[JoeAltmaier]

Wrong. Netflix is the larger part of the internet. That has nothing to do with me.

[notdanariely]

In case you aren't just being argumentative, using bandwidth as the metric of choice when discussing lightbox-style page elements is sub-optimal. Or when discussing business models of websites that use those page elements.

A better metric is some sort of pageviews / site visitors / uniques / etc.

[JoeAltmaier]

Come on. Netflix is the single largest consumer of the Internet. Any metric you want to name. Consumer interactions being the most important. They beat other video-on-demand services by a large margin. And most of those others have popups (or forced ads injected into the content). And Netflix beats them all. You understand the argument.

[notdanariely]

You have honestly lost me. Not only am I unsure of any argument you set forth except "Netflix is the biggest consumer of the internet", but I can name many metrics by which they aren't top 10. Namely, pageviews, unique visitors, alexa rank, or just about any other metric that doesn't measure bandwidth.

Are you only discussing VOD sites? That's the only way I can make any sense of your arguments. (Also, what do you mean by netflix being a "consumer of the internet"?)

[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/netflix.com]

[Alupis]

You provide one example of a single website out of millions that does not use a popup, and claim QED?

Like stated before... you are letting your personal bias creep into a pseudo-fact.

[JoeAltmaier]

'A single website' that is the largest single fraction of the entire internet traffic, yes. And what's with the 'pseudo' slam?

[Alupis]

I honestly don't know what you are trying to debate anymore. Netflix might account for the largest bandwidth consumption, sure, but it's not even in the top 50 websites by users/pageviews. Your analogy falls down hard; we're talking about a common tactic to collect email addresses... to my knowledge Netflix does not have a newsletter they send out. Does that mean nobody should collect email addresses and run a newsletter campaign? Absolutely not.

> And what's with the 'pseudo' slam?

You are making up facts to support your skewed and biased view. You don't like popups that ask for email addresses, therefore you assert they are ineffective and annoying to all users. This is absurd, and provably false.

You assert Netflix has the most consumption of bandwidth for a single service on the internet, and they don't employ a popup to collect email addresses... and therefore conclude that nobody should use a popup to collect email addresses. This is equally absurd.