A pretty good network if you are looking to make a quick buck from your website. Run by Standard Internet, this program offers $4 CPM for pop ups and exit consoles and $3 CPM for popunders. (These rates went up from their previous levels of $3 and $2 respectively at the end of 2003.) The program's terms even allow you to combine these formats to be shown all at once, for a whopping $11 CPM, but this is obviously going to be very detrimental to your return traffic.
All the rates mentioned above are for 12 hour unique visitors. The way this works is that the IP cache is reset on their servers at Noon and Midnight Eastern Standard Time. (Standard Internet is located in New Jersey.) So in theory, it will be possible to get credited for the same visitor at 11AM and then again 1PM. The credit cap is separate for each format - for example, having shown a user a pop-up, you can still get credited for a pop-under shown in 10 minutes.
While you only get credited for a visitor once in the 12 hour period, the pops will be shown every time the PopUpTraffic code is loaded, even if this means showing unpaid pops. This can be avoided by using a wrapper code that will set a 12 hour cookie when showing ad, but can be a little counter-intuitive especially to novice webmasters. (In contrast networks such as FastClick and
Casale Media keep track of this on the server side, and do not show unpaid impressions.)
Associated with PopUpTraffic are widespread reports of undercounting - people will see more credited views when running other 12-hour unique programs as compared to PUT. Standard Internet has denied such charges on numerous occasions, but the rumors persist.
A much bigger problem is that on occasion bad ads will slip into rotation. These can be anything from badly written javascripts which cause error alerts on some browsers to full blown trojans that will exploit an IE vulnerability to install themselves wreaking havoc on the host system. SI is usually pretty prompt about removing these from rotation when alerted to them, but sometimes (especially on weekends) such ads will run for a couple of days before being noticed and reported. The problem is by no means frequent - only a couple of incidents happened in the last few years - but can be pretty damaging to any site.
PopUpTraffic's statistics are simple yet functional: you get total monthly figures that can be broken by day or by format. These are updated every hour, though there have been times when server problems resulted in a lag of a day or two.
A nice feature of this program is the ability to run one code on as many sites as you wish, as long as they comply with the Terms of Service (as opposed to having to apply with each site individually).
PUT has a referral program that will pay out 10% of the earnings of any webmaster you sent to them, for the life of the account. The minimum monthly payout is $25, paid Net30. Standard Internet as a company are very reliable with their payments, and PopUpTraffic is no exception.
Overall, this is a pretty good company for pops. The rates are probably the highest among the programs available to small to mid-sized websites, but quality of service could stand to be improved.
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