Stamps.com Hit By Rising Internet Traffic Quality (STMP 3Q05 Conf Call Quotes)

Stamps.com (ticker: STMP) CEO Ken McBride made a noteworthy comment on his company's October 19th conference call. He said that Stamps.com's new customer adds fell below expectations due to pop-up blockers, spam filters and other factors. This is a theme that has recurred on The Internet Stock Blog: since the Spitzer-Intermix suit, companies that are dependent on low-quality traffic are being hit, and it looks as though things will only get worse (or continue to improve, if you're a consumer). Here it is in Mr McBride's own words:

While the third quarter has always been a seasonally slower quarter for acquisition, we did experience a deeper dip in gross acquisition this quarter than we saw last year. We think the dip in acquisition during Q3 can be primarily attributed to online marketing initiatives and we believe the slowdown may be related to several trends, including more competition from online advertising inventory than we have seen in the past, particularly in our online enhanced promotion channel; some shifts in technology that may have made it more difficult to acquire customers, such as pop-up blockers and newer browser technology that have made it more difficult to get a customer through our highly secure registration process; and bulk e-mail filters that have made it harder for our partners' permission-based e-mails to get through to prospects.

We do feel that we have already responded to some of the changes in the landscape with some changes and improvements of our own, including a change to our online registration process that we made early in the fourth quarter and other changes and improvements that we plan to make in the coming months.

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)