Passive Aggressive Opt out forms

[shantnu]

Just saw this on Cracked.com, and immediately screamed Yes!.

(click on image to see full size)

Link (1st image is slightly NSFW, so take care): http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1968_26-wtf-advertising-techniques-that-should-be-banned-forever/

Other pet hates: Signup forms that take up whole screen and have no close button (like the pop up boxes of old), and idiotic “exit tracking” technology that tries to guess when you are leaving the webpage and blams you with a screen grabbing popup.

[Andy]

Nobody wants to pay for anything so I guess we are going to see every more aggresive crap like this. And endless ‘empty calorie’ click bait. A headlong race to the bottom. How depressing…

The bikini body ad reminds me of this Mitchell and Webb sketch (borderline NSFW):

[SteveMcLeod]

I discussed this trend for “aggressive popups” with friends last night. One person stated that as annoying as they are, they do manage to work as an email list building technique. What we didn’t resolve was whether they build a quality list.

http://waitbutwhy.com/ self-knowingly mocks the aggressive popup while still using them.

[shantnu]

they do manage to work as an email list building technique

Of course they work! All spammy / sleazy techniques do, which is why people use them.

Till the customers collectively lose it, and use technology to block them.