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