In yesterdays New York Times, an article on AOL’s management shakeup reported that AOL discovered its membership was fleeing in the face of increased pop-up ads:
A study showed that when the number of pop-up ads was cut in half for a group of members, their satisfaction improved notably. That led not only to a cutback in the number of pop-ups across the service, but was, according to Mr. Leonsis, the catalyst for a revolution within AOL.