Pop-up ad

Background

For early advertising-supported web sites, banner ads were sufficient revenue generators, but in the wake of the dot com crash, prices paid for banner advertising clickthroughs decreased and many vendors began to investigate more effective advertising methods. Pop-up ads by their nature are difficult to ignore or overlook, and are claimed to be more effective than static banner ads. Pop-ups have a much higher click rate than web banner ads do.

Pornographic web sites are among the most common users of pop-up ads. Some particularly vicious types of pop-up ads (again, most often seen in connection with adult entertainment sites) appear to have either been programmed improperly or have been specifically designed to "hijack" a user's Internet session. These forms of pop-ups sometimes spawn multiple windows, and as each window is closed by the user it activates code that spawns another window -- sometimes indefinitely. This is sometimes referred to by users as a "Java trap", "spam cascade" or "Pop-up Hell" among other names. Usually the only way to stop this is to close the browser.

Other pop-ups appear to come from perfectly legitimate websites that have been hijacked to link to other websites, usually in the form of pop-unders (see below). Online dating services are most prevalent in this category; LoopyLove.com, Pocado.com, DatingDirect.com, GirlsDateForFree.com and MatchMaker.com are known to harvest email addresses and create false accounts for the purposes of increasing site traffic and boosting advertising revenue. Accounts created in this way usually only remain active for three to four weeks, before the hijack is discovered and the account deleted.

Another variation of pop-up, commonly called "Vampire Reduction", particularly fills an entire screen with an ad or Web page, in the process removing any menu bars or other on-screen icons by which the user can close the window. This problem mainly affects users of the Windows version of Internet Explorer. Often, access to other open windows and Web pages is denied. One way for PC users to close these ad windows is accessing the Task Manager via the Control-Alt-Delete shortcut and terminating Internet Explorer, which can result in all active IE windows (including those not connected to the pop-up) closing. Mousetrapping may often be closed by holding down Alt + F4 on a Windows machine.

Non-browser pop-up ads

Processes other than the Web browser can also display pop-up ads, or can direct the browser to display them. Many spyware programs do this, as well as some advertising-supported software, although the line between the two is sometimes thin.

A different sort of pop-up ad can be sent via the Messenger service in Microsoft's Windows operating system. These pop-ups appear as Windows dialog boxes with a textual message inside, usually directing the user to a Web site. Claims have been made that this type of pop-up has been used to commit extortion. Threats of legal action against the company D Squared Solutions has caused them to stop using this technique.

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