How to shoot yourself in the foot

I just went to check our Ananzi (South African Search Engine / Portal with about 5% search market share, as opposed to Google.co.za with 85%) and they were running their regular polls.  Ananzi makes their money out of advertising and sponsorships (along with a bit of affiliate banners, here and there).  I was amazed to see their latest poll:

“Do you click on our Pop-ups Adverts?”

A couple of points:

• Firstly, South Africa, as well as just about everyone else, HATES popups. It’s sooo Web 1.0!
• They’re obviously charging for the popups on a CPM, otherwise they wouldn’t have to ask the question.  The fact that advertisers in South Africa are stupid enough to pay CPM on Pop-ups, is scary.  Arguably, this is not even branding, but irritation media.
• If they are charging on a CPM, based on the outcome of the poll, they’re over-charging their advertisers by double and would probably be liable for a big refund to them (if I was an advertiser, I would go nuts to hear these stats).

It saddens me sometimes to see how the rest of world have just not caught up with the trends and business knowledge gained in the US & European markets.  It’s only a matter of time though and at some stage, we can all hope that the world becomes geographically agnostic in terms of value delivery, thanks to the Internet and the knowledge base that resides within it.