The Man Responsible For Pop-Up Ads On Building a Better Web

An anonymous reader writes Above all, Ethan Zuckerman wants you to know that he is sorry. In the mid-1990s, Zuckerman was working as a designer and programmer for Tripod.com when he wrote the code for the first pop-up ad. He says: "At the end of the day, the business model that got us funded was advertising. The model that got us acquired was analyzing users’ personal homepages so we could better target ads to them. Along the way, we ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: the pop-up ad. It was a way to associate an ad with a user’s page without putting it directly on the page, which advertisers worried would imply an association between their brand and the page’s content. Specifically, we came up with it when a major car company freaked out that they’d bought a banner ad on a page that celebrated anal sex. I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good."

Comments

Not sure I believe him...

[Travis Mansbridge]

As soon as the tools were added for a web page to open a new web-page, I'm sure pop-ups were "invented" simultaneously across numerous ad agencies.

If only he'd taken out a patent...

[ConfusedVorlon]

A very expensive patent that was litigated aggressively...

Unintended Consequences?

[BarbaraHudson]

... which led to the pop-under, etc. On the bright side, this led to higher adoption rates for browsers that supported ad-blockers, noscript, etc. So if it weren't for this guy, Firefox would probably never have gained the traction it did, and the vast majority of people would be stuck on IE.

Re:Unintended Consequences?

[bunratty]

I never thought of that as the reason that Firefox became popular (and why Mozilla was quickly becoming popular before that). Back then, Mozilla's built-in popup blocker blocked nearly all popups. IE didn't have any corresponding feature? That sure would be a compelling reason to switch browsers!

When I read the article, the thought I had was that I installed AdBlock Plus only to disable the popups that Firefox didn't block with its built-in blocker when popups evolved to get around it. Is there still not an ad blocker that blocks only the most annoying ads such as popups?

good intentions?

[radja]

the intention was to show advertising to people. Steal their bandwidth and hide real content without getting approval. The intentions of advertising on the web were never good, they were evil. And all that because some companies want to line their pockets.

Re:good intentions?

[SuricouRaven]

Not entirely evil. Thanks to those ad-funded companies like Tripod, many people were able to create websites that could not otherwise have afforded to do so. Web hosting was expensive back in those days, and even now it'll still cost you at least ten quid a month or so, which is a significant amount for some. Even today we continue to reap the benefits of advertising-based businesses for all manner of useful things - even though the ads themselves are so loathed that many users find ways to block them.

Makes sense

[SJHillman]

We finally have it confirmed that pop-up ads are the result of anal sex. Makes sense to me.

I was in Marketing too...

[Vitriol Angst]

But I have to admit that if my intentions were ever good, I wasn't actually marketing anymore. I'm glad that he's apologetic, but he was in marketing. You don't swing a pitchfork in Hell and pretend you don't work there.

This technology sounds totally cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

This technology sounds totally cool. I'd like to see them use it to make pop-up ads on the shitty Slashdot Beta site. They could make pop-up ads to counter the user's extreme boredom as this user waits for the shitty Beta site's page and all its shitty JavaScript and CSS crap to initially load. Then they make pop-up ads on to record the exact back-button click when the person notices that it's the shitty Beta site rather than the Classic site, and the person's anger starts to grow. The pop-up ads would progressively cause the user's anger to turn into madness, and then finally utter and complete disappointment and despair once the shitty Beta site has finally loaded. The pop-up ads could also cause the formation and flow of the very first of many teardrops to cascade down this poor victim's cheeks as the user struggles in vain to read the stories' small text with poor contrast. The total anguish could be examined in excruciating detail, so the awful nature of the Slashdot Beta site could be truly comprehended.

Paving to the road to hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Advertiser's intentions are never good. Their intention is to manipulate people at a subconscious emotional level in order to get their money. "Good" is when you donate to charity, not when you manipulate people.

Facebook

[Stele]

And then he went on to write Facebook. I'm not sure I like this guy.

Good intentions in marketing?

[thegarbz]

There are no such things as good intentions, at least not for users.

Marketing is about manipulating and about out-shouting the competition. This is not at all restricted to the internet. The obvious progression on the internet was stationary ads, animated ads, ads that pop up over content, ads that were indistinguishable from content, ads that bypassed adblockers, ads that started playing sound, ads that start playing videos, and now ads that pop up in the middle of videos.

We saw the same thing with TVs, ads in the ad breaks, louder ads in the ad breaks, longer ad breaks, ads popping up at the bottom of the screen during content, ads featured in content (not all actors like drinking Coke).

Oh and on billboards which were painted on the side of buildings, then free standing, then free standing with lots of lighting shining on them, and now a back lit video billboard which is blindingly bright at night.

Sorry buddy but you never had "good intentions".