Definition

The universally despised website element that appears uninvited like a digital door-to-door salesman, blocking content you actually want to see with newsletters you'll never read. Marketing teams swear they increase conversions while users develop involuntary muscle memory for locating tiny X buttons. The internet's most successful experiment in training an entire generation to have lightning-fast reflexes.

Example Usage

I couldn't even read the headline before three popups asked for my email, location, and apparently my firstborn child.

Source: Common web design and marketing terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

Social Proof

The psychological phenomenon where people do things because other people are doing them, weaponized by marketers since the dawn of the testimonial. It's why every landing page has a section that says "Trusted by 10,000+ companies" next to logos you've never seen.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Advanced

attribution window

The time period during which a conversion can be credited to a specific ad interaction. It's the arbitrary timeframe marketers use to claim credit for sales that may have happened anyway.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

lookalike modeling

An algorithmic process that identifies new prospects who share characteristics with your existing customers, based on the bold assumption that people who look similar on paper will buy similar things. Statistical stereotyping, but make it marketing.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

target

In business and marketing, the specific audience segment you're trying to reach, sell to, or manipulate into thinking they need your product. It's the demographic, psychographic, or behavioral group that your entire campaign is aimed at—ideally based on data, but often based on whoever the VP thinks buys stuff. Missing your target means wasted ad spend; hitting it means annoying the right people with your ads.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

marketing operations

The function responsible for marketing technology, analytics, data management, and process optimization. Often abbreviated MarOps, it's the team that actually makes marketing work while creative people take credit.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Beginner

Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors who land on your website and immediately leave, like someone who walks into a party, sees their ex, and moonwalks right back out the door. A high bounce rate is your website's way of telling you it has the personality of a damp towel.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Translate This Term

See “popup” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on XShare on FacebookShare on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Intermediate

SAFE

Simple Agreement for Future Equity—a Y Combinator innovation that lets startups take money now and figure out the valu...