The post is pretty relevant even today - I'm seeing more popups and slideouts and other s^&t now than ever :-).
However, it's a fact that they lead to more conversions, more signups and more sales.
It's pretty useless to complain about them - if the publisher's goal is to drive sales using content that will never be seen, that's their prerogative. If the readers don't like the popups, they can just say TC;DR and leave the site forever. Or use ad blockers (which publishers hate, for obvious reasons).
In the long run, analytics will show that drop in view numbers.
> However, it's a fact that they lead to more conversions, more signups and more sales.
I wouldn't jump to conclusions. Maybe you have expertise on this, I don't, but I've seen nothing that could make me lay a definitive conclusion like this.
The article incision is on the fact that some people needs analytics to back up evaluation of the web site trying to know if it's doing good or not, regardless of revenue. So you end up to those techniques that drives irrelevant numbers up, that can even damage potential revenue, but it's ok, you're doing the right things, look at those good numbers. You can't test such things with A/B testing or anything else, it's long term relationship with the audience, and those analytics are not measuring this.
Yeah, I'm only talking about small niche websites aimed at ranking in Google and/or Facebook and driving leads/sales. Various pop-ups and free offers work very well.
I'm pretty sure they don't work on tech-savvy people and for large blogs where the audience matters more than monetization.
However, it's a fact that they lead to more conversions, more signups and more sales.
It's pretty useless to complain about them - if the publisher's goal is to drive sales using content that will never be seen, that's their prerogative. If the readers don't like the popups, they can just say TC;DR and leave the site forever. Or use ad blockers (which publishers hate, for obvious reasons).
In the long run, analytics will show that drop in view numbers.