Advertisers Finding Ways Around Popup Blockers

[The Dude]

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-22...1.html?tag=e019

By Stefanie Olsen

CNET News.com



In January, Paul Haigh downloaded Google's toolbar to dispel annoying pop-up ads. By March, they were back.



Google's pop-up blocker, included as part of the Web search engine's popular browser plug-in, "worked fantastically well for about two months, blocking everything," said Haigh, a photographer from the United Kingdom. "Then the odd pop-up started to appear, mainly on highly ad-displaying sites based in the United States."



"I know they are on the increase because they are annoying me again," he said, adding that he's received three this week.



Pop-up purveyors are finding ways around popular new filters that aim to stomp them out, the latest sign of an Internet arms race over one of the most effective and controversial Web advertising formats around.



Google, America Online, Yahoo, EarthLink, Microsoft and a slew of niche software developers have begun offering consumers easy-to-install, free blocking software. As much as 30 percent of the Internet population uses a pop-up guard, according to estimates from ad technology companies. That number is set to soar when Microsoft releases an update to its Windows XP operating system later this summer that is expected to include a pop-up blocker for its Internet Explorer Web browser, which serves about nine in 10 people who surf the Web.



Because IE so thoroughly dominates the browser market, ad executives and Internet watchers believe the changes could finally burst the bubble for pop-ups.



But marketers intent on preserving and extending the lucrative format have already developed workarounds that are duping existing blockers, setting the stage for a major battle for control over consumer PC screens.



"Relatively quickly (IE) will displace all other pop-up blockers, then people will try to figure out how to get around that," said Richard Smith, a privacy and security expert.



At stake is the future of a form of online advertising that many ad executives say is among the highest performers for Internet marketers--despite severe negative reactions from a majority of Web users.



Research shows the ads have only become more predominant since the rise of pop-up guards. In the last two years, the number of pop-ups and pop-unders delivered to Web users has more than tripled. They made up 6.4 percent of all online ads in April of this year, compared with 1.8 percent in the same period of 2002, according to data from researcher Nielsen NetRatings.



Publishers willingly allow pop-ups or pop-unders because they command higher prices, and they're in high demand by advertisers. Ad executives say they can cost advertisers about $10 per thousand sent for top-rated sites. That compares with between $2 and $3 per thousand for a static banner ad that appears on the same popular site.



The Web sites that sold or disseminated the most pop-up ads in the month of April include CNN.com, ESPN.com, Excite.com, Weather.com, and The New York Times.



Click rates, or the number of times people click on an ad, could explain the growth of pop-up ads. Marketers say between 2 percent and 5 percent of the people who receive them will respond with a click. That compares with less than 0.35 percent for the most widely used ad on the Net today, static banners, according to an ad server report from DoubleClick.



"Pop-ups still get the highest clicks," said John Enghauser, business development manager for TrafficMarketplace, an ad network and one of the biggest distributors of pop-ups. He said that his company does not do any workarounds to deliver the ads.



Blocking software typically suppresses a new window. It detects a command known as "openwin" for opening a new window, which would be written into the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) of a Web page. That command calls on a third-party server to deliver the pop-up or pop-under.



Deflating pop-up blockers

Some new pop-up techniques simply avoid that command, thus, subverting blockers that rely on suppressing it. For example, some advertisers are sending pop-ups through a "user initiated command" triggered when people mouse over an object on the page, according to ad executives familiar with the technique.



"It initiates a JavaScript command, and it gets around pop-up blockers that don't block user initiated commands like Google and Yahoo," said Adam Tuttle, director of Adserver sales for Fastclick, another ad network. Adserver does not use the technique, he said, because it does not behoove the company to send an ad to someone wishing to avoid it.



Google declined to comment for this story. But the company's Web site references one common way that people end up with pop-ups, even if they've downloaded its tool. Adware, or software that gets bundled with other popular applications like Kazaa, can deliver the ads because they originate from the desktop, not the browser, and are not governed by the blocking tools. "You may have these programs or others like them installed on your computer without even being aware of it," according to Google's Web site.



Mainstream advertising networks and distributors are reluctant to discuss what steps, if any, they are taking to circumvent pop-up blockers, although some admit that they've developed new methods to serve such ads. In addition, some advertisers are busy developing intrusive formats that mimic pop-ups in their ability to grab attention, but that don't surrender control over when and how they're displayed to consumers' Web browsers.



Publishers have taken to spawning in-pages ads in lieu of pop-ups, called "overlays" or "floater ads." Like stacking paper, the ads will float over the middle of a Web page to catch people's attention before reading requested content. Visitors typically can't manipulate the ads like they can a pop-up or pop-under by minimizing the window or clicking the exit button. Floating ads will remain on the page until they disappear, or until the visitor leaves the page.



Pop-up blockers like Google's or Yahoo's don't prevent these ads from appearing because they use a different command.



Floating ads appear because they're written in coding language called dynamic HTML, which contains a series of embedded commands that ad blockers typically don't block.



Sites including Netscape and MSN Money use overlay advertisements in lieu of pop-ups.



Many ad-delivery companies are now using technology to detect whether or not a computer or visitor has installed a pop-up blocker. If one is detected, it will deliver a floating ad to the page instead. Burst Media, for example, is one company that is experimenting with the overlays.



"Instead of a pop, they float over the page," said Jarvis Coffin, CEO of Burst Media, which represents ad sales for about 2,000 sites.



Overtone Networks, one of the largest distributors of pop-under ads, with customers including Yahoo Personals, HBO and Orbitz, uses pop-up blocking detection technology from Zedo, an ad delivery company based in San Francisco.



Yahoo spokeswoman Stephanie Iswamasa said that because the ads are delivered differently, the company doesn't necessarily consider them pop-ups and therefore doesn't block them. However, she said, Yahoo is always evaluating new technologies to help improve consumers' experience on the Web.



Pop-ups came into fashion during the dot-com bust, when publishers were desperate for ad dollars and sought to please marketers with more attention-grabbing means to reach consumers. But Web surfers came to loathe them, and publishers such as the Web site for The New York Times moved to regulate how often people receive them.



Downloadable software to block the ads also has become ubiquitous; major Internet service providers, software companies like Panicware, and even Amazon.com offer tools to staunch them.



Yet it remains to be seen whether they will die out now that the overall Internet advertising industry has rebounded. Last week, the trade group Interactive Advertising Bureau reported a record quarter of sales for the industry, the highest since it began tracking the sector in 1996. Sales for the first three months of 2004 were $2.3 billion, up from $1.6 billion in the year-ago period.



Jason Krebs, head of online ad sales for The New York Times' Web site, said that the online newspaper continues to sell pop-unders as one of many options because they're effective for advertisers. He added that he has no problem with blocking technologies from Google and others.



"You cannot stop technologies. What we do is we adapt to the changing technologies (and advertising environment) and continue to operate the business successfully," Krebs said.

Thank god i use MyIE2 which filters almost all kinds of popups,the only kind not filtered are the FLOATING POPUPS and 1 other kind (Which luckily i hardily ever see)

The Dude

[Jaime Andrés]

Pop ups have been around for a very long time. I remember as a very small child having storybooks which had pop-ups as you turned the pages
I'm sure that there are many free ad blockers, but I bought AdDelete. In some ways it is too good inasmuch as I have to disable it on certain sites such as trying to book airline tickets, it won't open subsequent pages.

[locustfurnace]

Originally posted by The Dude@Jun 6 2004, 01:44 AM
Thank god i use MyIE2 which filters almost all kinds of popups,the only kind not filtered are the FLOATING POPUPS and 1 other kind (Which luckily i hardily ever see)

MyIE2 which uses the SDK from Slimbrowser, is basically the same, except that Slimbrowser does block floating images. It removes ads based on size and or timing. If you load a page and 2 seconds adterwards another page is executed, it will block it.
The final solution to blocking ads is just disable the javascripting.
But using Slimbrowser, Knonqueror. I've not seen a pop-up in many years.

[beanboy89]

I use Mozilla Firefox which has a built in popup blocker and I have not seen any popup windows at all.

[Guest]

I used to use IE with Google Toolbar, but all these ads were starting to appear in the most random places. So I went to NetScape 7.0 for 2 weeks. Then I downloaded Firefox by Mozilla, and it's about 1000 times better than IE. Sooo fast! I love it! :wub:

[Guest]

"Pop-ups still get the highest clicks," said John Enghauser, business development manager for TrafficMarketplace, an ad network and one of the biggest distributors of pop-ups.


Who are these dummies clicking on them?


I don't get any pop-ups except the ones build into the sites like ESPN.com

[locustfurnace]

Once all the pop-ups are blocked, the advertisers wont go away, they will do something even more forced, look at the way TV stations have stuffed that network logo onto every single channel now. You miss alot of the screen due to that annoying corner eye-sore. Some networks have begun to use the ticker which was only before seen on channels like ESPN, C-SPAN.
I think what they will do is make an entrance page, with a banner ad, then next page, just a tib bit of content, then the following page, ads. and so on and so on. It will take 50 clicks to read a single news eadline.
Which some sites already do this. Tim O'Reilys one website gives you an article to read but its chopped up into several pages. Each page loading more and more ads.
Then its time to just pull out the text only web browsers. Since they do not do javascripting or any graphics