Given they're all from the same company usually whose name escapes me right now, you'd think they'd be better at it?

I've never tested it, so I have no idea if it works. It's an interesting hypothesis at least.

Yeah, they all say that. The question is: if that's true, then why aren't more sites using "survey popups'?

It's easy to see how this happens; a clueless exec at big-corp decides they need data, survey company gives them a sales pitch they can't refuse, exec never bothers to actually check out the product.

These worthless surveys are almost exclusively on the websites large enterprisey companies that got off the clue-train years ago.

A business model worth of our admiration!

Extra negative points if your account creation process requires a phone number or e-mail address verification step.

A good e-commerce site will give you the option of creating an account only at the end of checkout and the account is totally optional. I've seen it before but unfortunately it's not the majority.

Agreed - and those surveys are often powered by? ... Google!

This is indeed a little hypocritical of them.

We need to do something abut intrusive ads, but I'm not sure this is it.