The jury is still out as to whether the seemingly ubiquitous X10 ads have worked or not. Surely you've seen them. They're the surveillance camera ads that, unbeknownst to you, load beneath your browser window (thus called pop-unders). The pop-under ads lay in wait while you continue surfing. Then, just when you thought you were done--voilà--you're hit with the pitch.

It's a clever enough strategy, and by some standards, it has been spectacularly successful. After all, the campaign has enjoyed incredible reach. According to Jupiter Media Metrix, the X10 ad, which runs on such prominent sites as the New York Times, gets served to a full one-third of global users. On the other hand, two-thirds of those users close the ad window within 20 seconds.

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But what makes the X10 ad news- and debate-worthy is the groundswell of ire it has aroused. On Web logs and around watercoolers everywhere, people are denouncing X10 with the kind of vitriol usually reserved for unfaithful mates or meddlesome in-laws. On X10's own site, the company defends itself by insisting that the ads are in fact legal. In a further effort to appease the angry hordes, it even allows you to opt out of receiving the ads, although only for a month.

As such, the X10 campaign would appear to have backfired. Even if the ad is successful in moving the merchandise, most marketing specialists agree that the company hasn't done itself any favors in terms of branding. One may ask, however, if the backlash has as at least as much to do with the winking juxtaposition of a pretty girl and a spy camera as it does with the technology. The voyeuristic insinuation, combined with the fact that the user generally has no idea where the ad came from, is probably enough to make most folks resentful.

But, in the end, isn't there something to be said in defense of pop-unders as an ad format? After all, they're less obtrusive than ordinary interstitials, ads that brazenly insert themselves in the foreground, creating a barrier between the user and his or her destination. X10 may have given pop-unders and the company itself a bad name, but at least it didn't interrupt you to do it.