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Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
. A pop-up is a
graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...
(GUI) display area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears ("pops up") in the foreground of the visual interface. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
that uses cross-site scripting (XSS), sometimes with a secondary payload that uses
Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash ...
. They can also be generated by other vulnerabilities/security holes in browser security. A variation on the pop-up window, the pop-under advertisement, opens a new browser window under the
active window A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunc ...
. Pop-unders do not interrupt the user immediately, but appear when the user closes the covering window, making it more difficult to determine which website created them.


History

Pop-up ads originated on the
Tripod.com Tripod.com is a web hosting service owned by Lycos. Originally aiming its services to college students and young adults, it was one of several sites trying to build online communities during the 1990s. As such, Tripod formed part of the first wav ...
webpage hosting site in the late 1990s.
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
provided the capability for a web page to open another window. Ethan Zuckerman claims he used that capability to launch advertisements in separate windows as a response to complaints from advertisers about their ads appearing on pages with sexual content. Zuckerman later apologized for the unforeseen nuisance pop-up ads had evolved into.


Pop-up blocking

Web development and design technologies allow an author to associate any item on a pop-up with any action, including with a cancel or innocent looking button. Because of bad experiences and apprehensive of possible damage that they may cause, some users do not click on or interact with any item inside a pop-up window whatsoever, and may leave the site that generated them or block all pop-ups.
Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...
was the first major browser to incorporate tools to block pop-up ads; the
Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...
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 Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...
let users block unwanted pop-ups almost completely. In 2004, Microsoft released
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...
SP2, which added pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer. Most modern browsers provide pop-up blocking tools; third-party tools add other features, such as ad filtering.


Fake close buttons

Users of websites and web applications continuously experience unwanted pop up ads through the course of their normal interaction with a web browser. Ordinarily, users respond by dismissing the pop-up through the "close" or "cancel" feature of the window hosting the pop-up. Because this is a typical response, some authors of pop-up advertising depend on this, and create on-screen buttons or controls that look similar to a "close" or "cancel" option. When the user chooses one of these "simulated cancel" options, the button performs an unexpected or unauthorized action (such as opening a ''new'' pop-up, or downloading an unwanted file on the user's system).


Circumventing pop-up blockers

A ''hover ad'' or ''in-page pop-up'' uses
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
to combine a banner ad and a pop-up window that appears in front of the browser screen. JavaScript imposes an advertisement over a webpage in a transparent layer. This advertisement can appear in a variety of forms. For example, an advertisement can contain an
Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash ...
animation that links to the advertiser's site. An advertisement can also look like a normal
window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mat ...
. Pop-up blockers cannot block the ad because it is a part of the webpage, but it can be blocked with third-party ad blockers such as AdBlock and Adblock Plus, or by using custom style sheets.


URL redirection

URLs are sometimes redirected to advertisement pages by URL redirection. URLs are sometimes opened in a new tab and then the content of the old background tab will be replaced with an advertisement page by URL redirection, other times it switches the tab the user is on to the advertisement tab. Adblock Plus, uBlock and NoScript cannot block these redirects.


Techniques


"Pop-ups"

* Certain types of downloaded content, such as images, free music, and others, can cause pop-ups, and therefore should not be trusted, especially pornographic sites' pop-ups (known as a "pornado" or "porn-storm", as coined by John C. Dvorak.) Also, the pop-ups sometimes look like ordinary web pages, and the name of the site shows up in a search bar. * Many websites use pop-ups to display information without disrupting the page currently open. For example, they may provide needed extra guidance when filling in a
form Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens. Form also refers to: *Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter data * ...
on a web page, without causing loss of any information already entered into the form. Most pop-up blockers allow this kind of pop-up. Some, however, reload the page, losing any information the user entered. * Some online shops use exit intent popups, for example offering discounts, in an attempt to retain users. * Some web based installers, such as that used by McAfee, use a pop-up to install software. * On many internet browsers, holding down the ctrl key while clicking a link makes it bypass the popup filter. * Clicking (even accidentally) on one pop-up may open other pop-up ads.


Pop-under ads

Pop-under ads are similar to pop-up ads, but the ad window appears hidden behind the main browser window rather than superimposed in front of it. As pop-up ads became more widespread and more intrusive, often taking up whole computer screen, many users would immediately close the pop-up ads that appeared over a site without looking at them. Pop-under ads do not immediately impede the view of content, but remain unnoticed until the user closes or minimizes the main browser window.


Pop-under ad technology

A pop-under ad involves two JavaScript functions introduced in 1995 with the Netscape 2.0b3 browser. Modern web publishers and advertisers use it to create a window in front of the users screen, load an advertisement, and then send it behind the screen. // create a new window in front of the current site window.open( URL, windowName windowFeatures); // push the loaded advertisement back behind the browser window.focus(); Most modern browsers allow window.open to execute only if it was called by a user interaction (e.g., a mouse click) event handler. Any non-interactive calls (timer callback, load events, etc.) to window.open result in the new window being blocked. To bypass this restriction, most pop-under ads trigger on a mouse click event listener attached directly to the document or the document's body. This enables catching all mouse click events that were not consumed by other click event handlers, and calling window.open without being blocked. For example, when the user selects a text, the mouse click triggers the mouse click handler attached to the document and a pop-under opens using the above code. Other techniques to bypass the window.open call restriction do so by "hijacking" mouse clicks.


Hover ad

Hover ads, more commonly called in-page pop-ups, are a special type of pop-up ads created using Dynamic HTML,
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
and similar
web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...
technologies. Because they do not scroll with the web page, they appear to "hover" over the page, usually obscuring the content. Hover ads tend to be very hard to block by pop-up blocking software because the hover ad window is an integral part of the HTML content of the web page. Thus a software filtering the content has no algorithmic means of recognizing and removing parts of the content, either descriptive or procedural, that create, populate and manipulate the hover ad's window.


Pop-up effectiveness

Most pop-up advertising tools include built-in measurement possibilities. These are often dashboards that offer a detailed analysis of your current and previous pop-up ads. Typically, measurable items include: * Conversion rate or how pop-ups impact the quantity of targeted website activity. * Number of website visitors. Pop-ups that are inappropriate could hurt the visitors to your website. Counting visitors will enable you to keep track of the promotions, pages, and content that consumers enjoy the most, as well as the devices they use to access your website. * Drop-off rate. This measure aids in locating any particular pop-up fields that cause website visitors to leave before they can read your content. * Timing. Understanding if you are delivering the pop-ups in the right time affects the number of visitors and impressions you are getting from them and adjusting display rules accordingly.


Patent controversy

ExitExchange.com filed for a patent in 2000 on a subset of pop-under advertising called an exit pop. After years of controversy and numerous articles on the pop-under patent, the patent was awarded by the
United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...
(USPTO) in April and June 2008. The respective patent numbers are ('555) and ('229). '555 is related to the method of opening an exit pop from a toolbar or software application on a computing device, whereas '229 covers the method used to open an exit pop from an embedded script found within a media file (e.g., JavaScript code on a web page).


Copyright issues

Copyright aspects of pop-up advertising are discussed in the Wikipedia articles Derivative works and
Transformativeness In United States copyright law, transformative use or transformation is a type of fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original, and thus does not infringe its holder's copyright. T ...
. Both articles contain illustrations and links to examples of pop-up advertising.


See also

*''
1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. WhenU.com, Inc. ''1-800 CONTACTS v. WhenU.com'' was a legal dispute beginning in 2002 over pop-up advertisements.''1-800 CONTACTS, Inc. v. WhenU.Com and Vision Direct, Inc.'' 309 F.Supp.2d 467 (S.D.N.Y., 2003-12-22), reversed in part and remanded, F.3d—2 ...
'', lawsuit between 1-800 Contacts and WhenU SaveNow over pop-up ad placement * Ad serving *
Adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...
and
Spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their priv ...
* Dark pattern * Direct marketing * In-session phishing * Interstitial webpage *
List of pop-up blocking software This is a list of software that blocks pop-up ads. Browsers that block pop-up ads Trident shells *AOL Explorer *Avant Browser * GreenBrowser *Internet Explorer * Lunascape *Maxthon *MSN Explorer * NeoPlanet *Netcaptor * Netscape 8 *Sleipnir Gec ...
*
Malvertising Malvertising (a portmanteau of "malicious software (malware) advertising") is the use of online advertising to spread malware. It typically involves injecting malicious or malware-laden advertisements into legitimate online advertising networks ...
*
Malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depr ...
*
Messaging spam Messaging spam, sometimes called SPIM, is a type of spam targeting users of instant messaging (IM) services, SMS, or private messages within websites. Instant messaging applications Instant messaging systems, such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Twitte ...
* Modal window *
Ransomware Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid off. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, ...
* Technical Support Scam


Notes

*Adams, Cecil.
What's up with popup ads?
. '' The Straight Dope''. October 15, 2004. *Zabunov, S.
From Annoyance to Pleasure - The Artistic Popup Approach
. May 12, 2006. *US Patent 7,386,555

*US Patent 7,353,229 "[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,353,229&OS=7,353,229&RS=7,353,229 Post-session internet advertising system]"


References


External links


How To Stop Internet Popups
- entry in wikiHow
IAB Pop-Up Guidelines and Best Practice
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pop-Up Ad Digital marketing Information technology management Online advertising methods Online advertising Types of malware Web 1.0