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Pop-Up Ads Lead to Consumer Revolt, Ad-Blocking
securitas writes "The New York Times' Saul Hansell reports on pop-up advertising and the consumer backlash against intrusive advertising. It's worth noting that pop-ups and pop-unders are the most effective, lucrative and annoying online advertising form. The article discusses the boom in ad-blocker software, with AOL, Yahoo and Google getting into the game. Microsoft says that it will include pop-up blocking in IE when it releases WinXP SP2. According to one pop-under ad agency, 20%-25% percent of Web users have pop-up blocking enabled, double the rate of a year ago - Earthlink's numbers bear that out, with 1 million of its 5 million customers using its ad-blocking software 18 months after release. DoubleClick says that it is 'developing technology that will enable pop-up ads to evade the blocking software.' Why isn't that surprising?"
This escalating war will probably continue for awhile yet, but the fundamental question remains.
How do we, the Internet using population, pay for it?
Pop-ups are very annoying, which is why Mozilla is set to block them. Spam is very annoying, which is why my ISP blocks most of that.
The seemingly endless paid listings at the top of Google are useless AND annoying, which is why I'm looking for other search engines. (Hmmm or maybe a Google plug-in that would block the junk listings and leave the legitimate content??)
Still, at the end of the day, how do all of these websites and services get paid for? You need only look at on-line newspapers to realize that every day more of them are placing the bulk of their content behind a gate that requires at least registration, and often a paid subscription.
Three Squirrels
Sarcasm, you fucking moron.