Editing Pop-up ad

{{Short description|Form of online advertising}}
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{{Redirect|Pop-up window|pop-ups in general|dialog box|and|modal window}}
[[File:In-page pop-up window advertisement.jpg|thumb|Example of an in-page pop-up ad]]
'''Pop-up ads''' or '''pop-ups''' are forms of [[online advertising]] on the [[World Wide Web]]. A pop-up is a [[graphical user interface]] (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]]<ref>{{cite web |title=How To Create Popups |url=https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_popup.asp |website=www.w3schools.com |access-date=26 October 2019}}</ref> that uses [[cross-site scripting]] (XSS), sometimes with a secondary payload that uses [[Adobe Flash]].<ref name=mozilla-noscript>{{cite web |url=https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/noscript |title=NoScript :: Add-ons for Firefox |work=[[Mozilla Add-ons]] |publisher=[[Mozilla]]}}</ref> They can also be generated by other [[Vulnerability (computing)|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]]. Pop-unders do not interrupt the user immediately but appear when the user closes the covering window, making it more challenging to determine which website created them.

==History==
Pop-up ads originated on the [[Tripod.com]] webpage hosting site in the late 1990s.  [[JavaScript]] 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041/?single_page=true |title=The Internet's Original Sin: It's not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web. |last=Zuckerman |first=Ethan |date=August 14, 2014 |publisher=The Atlantic |access-date=June 7, 2019}}</ref> Zuckerman later apologized for the unforeseen nuisance pop-up ads had evolved into.<ref>{{cite news|last=O'Toole|first=James|title=Pop-up ad creator: 'I'm sorry'|url=https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/15/technology/pop-up-ads/index.html|access-date=August 15, 2014 |publisher=money.cnn.com}}</ref>

==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,<ref name="Smart Computing Article - Pop-ups"/> and may leave the site that generated them or block all pop-ups.

[[Opera (web browser)|Opera]] was the first major [[Web browser cache|browser]] to incorporate tools to block pop-up ads; the [[Mozilla Application Suite|Mozilla]] browser later improved on this by blocking only pop-ups generated as the page loads.{{citation needed|reason=Changelogs at http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-US/firefox/releases/0.1.html and http://www.opera.com/docs/changelogs/windows/700b1/ indicate that Mozilla first introduced the pop-up blocker on Sept. 23, 2002, while Opera introduced it on Nov. 13, 2002 (both beta software)|date=August 2016}}  In the early 2000s, all major web browsers except [[Internet Explorer 7|Internet Explorer]] let users block unwanted pop-ups almost completely. In 2004, Microsoft released [[Windows XP]] SP2, which added pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer.<ref>{{cite news|last=Naraine|first=Ryan|title=Windows XP SP2 Turns 'On' Pop-up Blocking|url=http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3327991|date=March 18, 2004|access-date=8 August 2013}}</ref> 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 throughout the course of their normal interaction with a web browser.<ref>{{cite web|last=Wegert|first=Tessa|title=Pop-Up Ads, Part 1: Good? Bad? Ugly?|date=14 March 2002 |url=http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1707013/pop-up-ads-part-good-bad-ugly|publisher=Incisive Interactive Marketing LLC|access-date=March 14, 2002}}</ref>  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).<ref name="Smart Computing Article - Pop-ups">{{cite web|url = http://www.smartcomputing.com/Editorial/article.asp?article=articles/WebOnly/TechSupport/441w10/41w01.asp&guid=|title = Pop-ups|work = Smart Computing|date = September 2004|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100522050023/http://www.smartcomputing.com/Editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2FWebOnly%2FTechSupport%2F441w10%2F41w01.asp&guid=|archive-date = 2010-05-22|url-status = dead}}</ref>

===Circumventing pop-up blockers===

A ''hover ad'' or ''in-page pop-up'' uses [[JavaScript]] 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 animation that links to the advertiser's site. An advertisement can also look like a normal [[window (computing)|window]]. 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 [[Cascading Style Sheets|style sheets]].

===URL redirection===
URLs are sometimes redirected to advertisement pages by [[HTTP 302|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 [[HTTP 302|URL redirection]], other times it switches the tab the user is on to the advertisement tab. [[Adblock Plus]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/2095#comment:16|title=#2095 (Prevent background redirects)|work=Adblock Plus Issue Tracker}}</ref> and [[NoScript]]{{fact|date=March 2018}} 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]].)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1896410,00.asp|title=Ubiquitous Porn: Alive on the Net|work=PCMAG|access-date=21 January 2015}}</ref> 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 [[webform|form]] on a web page, without causing the 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 popup|exit intent popups]], for example offering discounts, in an attempt to retain users.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://blog.useproof.com/exit-intent-popup | title=19 Exit Intent Popup Examples to Increase Conversions in 2022 }}</ref>
* Some web based installers, such as that used by [[McAfee]], use a pop-up to install software.
* On many web browsers, holding down the [[Control key|ctrl]] key while clicking a link makes it bypass the popup filter.<ref>{{cite web|title=How to disable popup-blockers|url=http://de.usa.edu/HowTo/How2PopupBlockers.html|access-date=2013-08-08|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130808091555/http://de.usa.edu/HowTo/How2PopupBlockers.html|archive-date=2013-08-08|url-status=dead}}</ref> 
* 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 intrusive, often taking up the 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 user's screen, load an advertisement, and then send it behind the screen.

<syntaxhighlight lang="javascript">
// 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();
</syntaxhighlight>

Most modern browsers allow <code>window.open</code> 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 <code>window.open</code> 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 <code>window.open</code> 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 <code>window.open</code> 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]] and similar [[web browser]] 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 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.

== 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]] (USPTO) in April and June 2008.<ref>{{cite web|title=Patents|url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120209693}}</ref>  The respective patent numbers are {{US patent|7386555}} ('555) and {{US patent|7353229}} ('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 on [[derivative works]] and [[transformativeness]]. Both articles contain illustrations and links to examples of pop-up advertising.

==See also== <!-- Please respect alphabetical order -->
*''[[1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. WhenU.com, Inc.]]'', lawsuit between [[1-800 Contacts]] and [[WhenU SaveNow]] over pop-up ad placement
*[[Ad serving]]
*[[Adware]] and [[Spyware]]
*[[Dark pattern]]
*[[Direct marketing]]
*[[In-session phishing]]
*[[Interstitial webpage]]
*[[List of pop-up blocking software]]
*[[Malvertising]]
*[[Malware]]
*[[Messaging spam]]
*[[Modal window]]
*[[Ransomware]]
*[[Technical Support Scam]]

==Notes==
*Adams, Cecil. "[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/041015.html What's up with popup ads?]". ''[[The Straight Dope]]''. October 15, 2004 {{Dead link|date=February 2022}}.
*Zabunov, S. "[http://popup-toolkit.com/articles/artistic-popup-approach.html From Annoyance to Pleasure - The Artistic Popup Approach]". May 12, 2006.
*US Patent 7,386,555 "[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=7,386,555&OS=7,386,555&RS=7,386,555   Post-session internet advertising system]"
*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==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Wiktionary|pop-up advertisement}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pop-Up Ad}}

[[Category:Digital marketing]]
[[Category:Information technology management]]
[[Category:Online advertising methods]]
[[Category:Online advertising]]
[[Category:Types of malware]]
[[Category:Web 1.0]]