From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Pop-up ads are a form of online advertising on the Internet where certain websites (or HTML pages) open a new window of your web browser that displays advertisements. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated with JavaScript, but can be generated by other means as well.
For early advertising-supported websites, banner ads were sufficient revenue generators, but eventually the prices paid for banner ad clickthroughs decreased and more effective advertisements were needed. Popup ads by their nature are difficult to ignore or overlook, making them more effective than static banner ads. Popups have a much higher click rate then Web banner ads do, so sites use them to generate more money.
Pop-ups are considered by many users to be a nuisance. Browsers and ad-blocking software try to stop the pop-ups, but advertisers continually seek ways to circumvent such restrictions. Many of the latest pop-ups are created using Flash and have extensive animation and trickery.
Pop-up ads can also be spawned as a separate process (that is to say, apart from the browser) on the user's local computer. This is in many cases a result of AdWare or spyware. One type of pop-up ad exploits the Messenger service in Microsoft's Windows operating system.
A number of add-on programs and browsers are created to attempt to block ads from showing up. Below are lists of some that do so.
Add-on programs that block pop-up ads
Browsers that block pop-up ads
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