• by Tig Tillinghast , September 12, 2002

General opinion about pop-up ads seems divided into two camps: Web users despise them and advertisers believe they comprise a necessary evil. But those advertisers and media outlets who grow to overly rely on pop-ups may be pointing themselves down one of those Darwinian dead ends.

It will take only a very few lines of code for Netscape and Microsoft to add the feature into their browsers that prevents the spawning of pop-up ads. Sure, that will break the interfaces of some very few Web sites out there, but such sites can quickly and easily adapt.

Pointing out that neither Microsoft nor Netscape have bothered to include such a feature may create a false sense of security. Both companies do not make money off the browser program, but rather on the media they sell as a result of the traffic the browsers create. For now, they make money off of advertising, such as pop-ups, and have very little self-interest in narrowing their options by turning them off.

But all of that could change very quickly if they were to develop a pop-up mechanism that worked outside of the browser. Netscape, for example, could give users the option of having non-Web ads pop up in exchange for not having to pay for the software. Microsoft, some have already argued, has built just such a mechanism with its Passport security service.

Once either browser company has an alternative pop-up delivery device, there will be no incentive for it to leave out that last remaining dearly desired feature: the pop-up nuker. And nuke them they will. Users will apply that option with glee, like a mosquito-bitten person with a flyswatter.

Even if the sites currently selling pop-ups change their packages to reflect only users employing non-major-brand browsers, these packages won’t prove tempting to ad buyers. That would be akin to television advertisers attempting to sell 30-second spots that would appear only on black and white TVs.

On that day when pop-ups die, they will not be missed. At graveside there may be a few spammers and perhaps an ad-ware guy holding a candle. But the mourning will be short, overshadowed by the loud party held next door by the Web surfers.