Our ad company mistakenly booked "pop-unders", which are popups that are supposed to load in the background, and are considered less obtrusive than the traditional ones.

We've had calls with them in the past alerting them to the fact that we will permit NO popups on FlyerTalk, unless they are user-initiated (ie. the visitor actually clicks on the ad banner to generate the popup).

Somewhere down the line this wasn't conveyed to the rep that booked the campaign, and they assumed that the popunders would be acceptable.

I've been working with our account representative for the last two days to determine the cause of the popups and to request their removal (which, to their credit, they did immediately upon my notification).

I've attached the content of an email from them explaning the mistake:

(quoted)
Hi Dan, I sincerely apologize for the misunderstanding. The information regarding pop-ups not serving to FlyerTalk had been conveyed to me during the transition. However, because Obtrusive Interstitials had been blocked in your site registry tools, but Non-Obtrusive Interstitials remained as accepted, I had wrongly assumed that you were allowing pop-unders, since as the category conveys, they are not as obtrusive. However, I should have followed up with you just to make sure, and apologize for not doing so. I completely understand that "no pop-ups" means no pop-ups, no pop-unders, no superstitials, nothing that has any non-user initiated creative that appears outside of the 468x60 window. As I mentioned on Friday, I have already blocked your site from the pop-unders and have removed all of the currently serving pop-under campaigns from your site (if I have missed any, please let me know and I will have them removed immediately). Also, to be completely sure that nothing even resembling a pop-up serves to your site, I am going to get in touch with all of the MC's and make sure that they do not target anything that falls into this category to your site, regardless of the blocking restrictions currently in place. I apologize again for the misunderstanding. If you would still like to have a conference call, please let me know. However, I can assure you that there is total understanding regarding your policy towards pop-ups. If you have any questions, please let me know.
(end quote)

I haven't had any more reports of popups, but if anyone notices any, please contact [email protected].