Pop-up ad

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Within Wikipedia, "popups" may refer to Navigation popups.

Dozens of pop-up ads cover a desktop.

Pop-up ads or popups are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to increase web traffic or capture email addresses. It works when certain web sites open a new web browser window to display advertisements. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript, but can be generated by other means as well.

A variation on the pop-up window is the pop-under advertisement. This opens a new browser window, behind the active window. Pop-unders interrupt the user less, but are not seen until the desired windows are closed, making it more difficult for the user to determine which Web site opened them.

1 Background
2 Non-browser pop-up ads
3 Pop-up blocking
4 Popup Generators
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Background

For early advertising-supported web sites, banner ads were sufficient revenue generators, but in the wake of the dot com crash, prices paid for banner advertising clickthroughs decreased and many vendors began to investigate more effective advertising methods. Pop-up ads by their nature are difficult to ignore or overlook, and are claimed to be more effective than static banner ads. Pop-ups have a much higher click rate than web banner ads do.

Pornographic web sites are among the most common users of pop-up ads. Some particularly vicious types of pop-up ads (again, most often seen in connection with adult entertainment sites) appear to have either been programmed improperly or have been specifically designed to "hijack" a user's Internet session. These forms of pop-ups sometimes spawn multiple windows, and as each window is closed by the user it activates code that spawns another window -- sometimes indefinitely. This is sometimes referred to by users as a "Java trap", "spam cascade" or "Pop-up Hell" among other names. Usually the only way to stop this is to close the browser.

Other pop-ups appear to come from perfectly legitimate websites that have been hijacked to link to other websites, usually in the form of pop-unders (see below). Online dating services are most prevalent in this category; LoopyLove.com, Pocado.com, DatingDirect.com, GirlsDateForFree.com and MatchMaker.com are known to harvest email addresses and create false accounts for the purposes of increasing site traffic and boosting advertising revenue. Accounts created in this way usually only remain active for three to four weeks, before the hijack is discovered and the account deleted.

Another variation of pop-up, commonly called "Vampire Reduction", particularly fills an entire screen with an ad or Web page, in the process removing any menu bars or other on-screen icons by which the user can close the window. This problem mainly affects users of the Windows version of Internet Explorer. Often, access to other open windows and Web pages is denied. One way for PC users to close these ad windows is accessing the Task Manager via the Control-Alt-Delete shortcut and terminating Internet Explorer, which can result in all active IE windows (including those not connected to the pop-up) closing. Mousetrapping may often be closed by holding down Alt + F4 on a Windows machine.

[edit] Non-browser pop-up ads

Processes other than the Web browser can also display pop-up ads, or can direct the browser to display them. Many spyware programs do this, as well as some advertising-supported software, although the line between the two is sometimes thin.

A different sort of pop-up ad can be sent via the Messenger service in Microsoft's Windows operating system. These pop-ups appear as Windows dialog boxes with a textual message inside, usually directing the user to a Web site. Claims have been made that this type of pop-up has been used to commit extortion. Threats of legal action against the company D Squared Solutions has caused them to stop using this technique.

[edit] Pop-up blocking

Opera was the first major browser to incorporate tools to block pop-up ads; the Mozilla browser later improved on this by blocking only pop-ups generated as the page loads. In the early 2000s, all major web browsers except Internet Explorer (then the most popular browser and still as of 2006) allowed the user to block unwanted pop-ups almost completely. In 2004, Microsoft released Windows XP SP2, which added pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer. Many users, however, remain unaware of this ability, or else choose not to use it. Many others are not able to use it at all, as they do not use Windows XP SP2, but older versions of Windows. Some users install non-Microsoft ad-blocking software instead.

Most modern browsers come with pop-up blocking tools; third-party tools tend to include other features such as ad filtering.

[edit] Browsers that block pop-up ads

The pop-up blocker included with Internet Explorer 6.0 SP2

AM Browser
America Online 9.0
Avant Browser
Enigma Browser
Flock
Gecko-based browsers
- Camino
- Epiphany
- Galeon
- K-Meleon
- Mozilla
- Mozilla Firefox
- Netscape 7 & 8
- SeaMonkey
Internet Explorer 6.0 SP2, 7.0
Konqueror
Links
Maxthon
Netcaptor
OmniWeb
Opera
Safari
Slim Browser
Smart Bro
Gosurf Browser

[edit] Add-on programs that block pop-up ads

Bayden Systems Popup Blocker
Google Toolbar -- freeware
KillAd -- freeware
MSN Toolbar
NoAds -- freeware
Popupcop
Popup Killa -- freeware
Pop-Up Sentry!
Pop-up Stopper
Privoxy
Proxomitron
Super Ad Blocker
STOPzilla
Yahoo! Toolbar

[edit] Problems with pop-up blockers and non-advertising 'pop-ups'

Cyworld is one of the largest Korean communities on the web, with approximately 11 million users, nearly a quarter of South Korea's total population. Each user has a home page, pre-designed and the same size, but customizable. The home page itself, however, is technically a pop-up as it is less than the size of a typical browser window (a so-called mini hompy, or miniature home page). After Windows XP SP2 was released, there was a flurry of activity as Cyworld changed its front page to explain to its 11 million users how to get past the pop-up blocker.

Many websites also use pop-ups to display information without disrupting the page currently open. For example, if you were to fill in a form on a web page and needed extra guidance, a pop-up would give you extra information without losing any information already entered into the form. Most pop-up blockers will allow this kind of pop-up. However, some will reload the page hence the possibility of loosing the entered information anyway.

Some web based installers such as that used by McAfee use a pop-up to install software, which are also blocked by most blockers.

[edit] Circumventing pop-up blockers

Advertisers continually seek ways to circumvent such restrictions. Many of the latest pop-ups are created using Flash and have extensive animation and trickery; others use DHTML to appear in front of the browser screen. Both Flash and DHTML ads can be very CPU intensive, sometimes bogging down older computers to the point of unusability.

A form of advertisement that combines elements of a pop-up and web banner is a Flash animation superimposed over a webpage in a transparent layer. The flash animation links to the advertiser's site or product. This is a new form of advertisement, created in response to the growing popularity of pop-up blockers. Because the advertisement is an embedded flash object, it can be blocked, but with more difficulty, as most programs would view it as part of the content of the page. Methods of removing these are by using CSS, or third-party extensions such as Adblock and flashblock.

On the other hand, the so called "hover ads" or DHTML pop-ups are based primarily on the JavaScript browser capabilities. Technically, DHTML pop-ups use JavaScript code that creates DOM object elements organized in a system. The Javascript code then manipulates CSS and the "position" attribute to produce visual effects, for example making a window which looks like a genuine OS window but moves away from your mouse whenever you try to close it. These effects were unavailable in the older pop-ups which relied on Javascript's window.open() function.

The DHTML approach of creating pop-ups is also harder to block than the pure Javascript method, as DHTML is an integral part of a modern web-browser. However, even DHTML pop-ups are blockable. The simplest method is to use a browser extension, such as Firefox's noscript, which can selectively disable or enable scripts for individual web-sites.

External Links/Sources:

Eyeblaster - company that created the format
Floating Ad example
noscript - a Firefox extension that can block DHTML hover ads

[edit] Popup Generators

A Popup Generator is a computer application used to design, produce, store, install and maintain popup advertisements. Popup generators vary from simple ones that generate blockable old-style annoying popups, to complex and sophisticated computer software applications, used to develop feature rich popup ads and hover ad windows.