If Earthlink starts killing pop-up ads

August 20, 2002 7:28 AM

If Earthlink starts killing pop-up ads will a trend emerge? I hate pop-up ads, but they must have some effect because I see more and more. I can see the logic in Earthlink's attempt to gain customers by promising to block pop-up ads, but will it have an effect? I can get other pop-up killers without getting it from Earthlink. Why don't they address spyware and attack web advertisers where they live?
posted by john_lustig (27 comments total)

From the article, consumers say pop-up ads are the most annoying part of the Internet. Since Earthlink itself gets no revenue from advertising, they can do this much more easily than AOL can, too. Looks like a no-brainer to me.
posted by kewms at 7:36 AM on August 20, 2002

Earthlink's pop-up blocking service will most likely appeal to people not in the know about the other alternatives. The general public is far less technically educated than your average Metafilter reader.

I'm staying with my current ISP. I'd miss those x10.com camera pop-up ads advertising little itty-bitty cameras for security reasons. Anyone else notice that the only surveillance going on is that of attractive, young women? Creepy.
posted by VelvetHellvis at 7:36 AM on August 20, 2002

Until Earthlink fully removes its ties to Scientology, I sure won't be joining up, no matter how many pop-up stoppers, gizmos & whosits they try & get ya with. Creeepy!
posted by macadamiaranch at 7:41 AM on August 20, 2002

Of course, people could just start using Mozilla -- then they'd be able to stop pop-up ads, control who can set cookies and even block images from advertisers' servers.

Nah...I guess it's easier to switch your ISP and let them do all that stuff for you.
posted by filmgoerjuan at 7:49 AM on August 20, 2002

There are dozens of legitimate uses for an X10 camera velvet. Honest. (the cockeyed.com parody is gone, along with the rest of the site... wtf)

Good for Earthlink. I for one have had enough of the pop-ups, and I don't like most of the pop up killers because they require you to shift click to open up new windows. On a personal level, I prefer server side solutions, and ISPs not affiliated with Sky Dayton.
posted by insomnyuk at 7:51 AM on August 20, 2002

Has Earthlink stopped spamming their own customers yet? Somehow I doubt it. It's bad enough that they historically take no discernible action (apart from automated bs replies) when so many other people use their servers to send stuff -- but I couldn't get'em to stop sending their own unsolicited garbage before finally giving up and dropping'em like a hot turd.

Don't reward these cretins by subscribing to their service.
posted by RavinDave at 7:53 AM on August 20, 2002

Creeepy!

... yes, when my Mindspring account became an Earthlink account, I got free Nikes and purple Kool-Aid. wtf.

they must have some effect because I see more and more

Their sole effect is to convince an advertiser to hand over some money to the site selling the pop-up ads. Users hate them but advertisers demand them, along with other intrusive forms of advertising. I've managed to keep popups off any of the sites I maintain, but recently had to give in and implement skyscraper ads on one site, because the advertising sales staff insisted that they were unable to sell smaller, less intrusive ads.

I can see the logic in Earthlink's attempt to gain customers by promising to block pop-up ads

I can see it too but I'm skeptical, to say the least. It's technically easier to identify pop-up ads than it is to identify email spam, but the Mindspring "Spaminator", which became the Earthlink "Spaminator", is just plain useless. I've had the same mindspring.com email address now for more than seven years and the amount of spam I get is mind-boggling.

The Spaminator used to be a selling point too; guess they don't talk about it so much anymore.
posted by Sapphireblue at 8:12 AM on August 20, 2002

I use OmniWeb 4.1 for MacOS X and I have to say that I almost forgot about the world of pop-up advertisements. OmniWeb does an excellent job of stopping them and also eliminating embedded advertisements on websites. Makes page loads much faster.

I say that I "almost forgot" because I had to use I.E. the other day for the first time in months and forgot how prevalent those little buggers are among the net.
posted by tgrundke at 8:14 AM on August 20, 2002

Someone's gonna sue them for this. Corporations have a god-given right to advertisement by any means necessary in this country, doncha know.
posted by mogwai at 8:19 AM on August 20, 2002

One issue that I have with anti-pop-up software (like Pop-Up Stopper) is that more and more websites are using legitimate pop-ups for the "print version" of a news story or a "configurator" for an ecommerce site, or whatever. Those of us who realize this can tell the difference and turn off the stopper software for the legitimate pop-up, but most people will start wondering why they click on a link but nothing happens.
posted by gen at 8:43 AM on August 20, 2002

Of course, people could just start using Mozilla -- then they'd be able to stop pop-up ads

OK, I'll swallow my pride and expose my ignorance. I use Mozilla, and the pop-ups are still everywhere. Somebody want to let me in on how to zap them?
posted by TBoneMcCool at 8:43 AM on August 20, 2002

Momentary derailment:

I've currently got Pacbell DSL, and I recently got a thing in the mail about Earthlink DSL.. I've been trying to find comparisons between the two on quality of service and connection speeds.. Pacbell is *usually* up, and decent with the speed...

any personal experience on the matter would be helpful..

anyone?
posted by vomitous at 8:47 AM on August 20, 2002

tbone - i use mozilla and the pop ups started working automatically, so i can't help you. but i also use mozilla's lovely add-on BannerBlind. end result - almost 100% ad free surfing.
posted by quarsan at 9:03 AM on August 20, 2002

Disabling pop-ups in Mozilla 1.0: just go to the menu bar, choose

Edit > Preferences, and in the Prefs window click the Advanced tab, and select Scripts and Windows. Uncheck "Open Unrequested Windows."
posted by insomnyuk at 9:05 AM on August 20, 2002

quarsan and insomnyuk: much thanks
posted by TBoneMcCool at 9:09 AM on August 20, 2002

If I were an advertising funded content provider and was aware that a particular ISP was blocking my ads, I might take that as a good reason to block that ISP from accessing my content at all.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:21 AM on August 20, 2002

Unfortunately, as more people start blocking pop-ups, content providers will get around this by putting the ad in the web page and the content in the pop-up. This is already occurring on some sites.
posted by bobo123 at 9:35 AM on August 20, 2002

Yeah, annoying flash ads that span the screen. God I hate Yahoo! now.
posted by insomnyuk at 9:44 AM on August 20, 2002

I use a little program called AdsGone which works really really well at blocking banner ads and popup ads, although it isn't free.
posted by mcsweetie at 9:59 AM on August 20, 2002

If I were an advertising funded content provider and was aware that a particular ISP was blocking my ads, I might take that as a good reason to block that ISP from accessing my content at all.

This is an excellent point. Somehow these content providers need to recover their costs. Where does the balance lie between annoying the heck out of everyone with pop-ups and forcing us all to pay for subscriptions? It seems like no one has struck on a good solution to this yet. Earthlink's offer is not a valid solution in the long run.
posted by Tempus67 at 10:15 AM on August 20, 2002

actually, this is gaining some ground: iVillage announced a couple of weeks ago they'd no longer be accepting advertising from outside advertisers which included popups. article from AdAge, article here. i guess the online marketing industry is finally realizing they're pissing people off. duh.
posted by patricking at 10:18 AM on August 20, 2002

vomitous: DSL Reports have some information and comparisons between providers.
posted by azazello at 10:27 AM on August 20, 2002

Regarding DSL: Even if you choose Earthlink, don't you end up running your data through PacBell's wires and network? It's not like Earthlink rolls out a new wire to you. Your data may switch over to Earthlink's network further upstream, but in my experience most DSL problems happen near the consumer.
posted by Triplanetary at 3:10 PM on August 20, 2002

but most people will start wondering why they click on a link but nothing happens.

And the answer to that will be the same as it is now for the small but not miniscule percentage of surfers who have javascript completely disabled: because the site author was stupid enough to use the very simple method which enables links to open in the original window if the user has no javascript. And frankly, that's just dumb.
posted by Dreama at 3:53 PM on August 20, 2002

The key to killing popups is to never click on the ads and complain to sites that have popups as well as the companies that use them to advertise. Companies like x10 won't care, but some might. That's why iVillage stopped.

And get a good popup killer.
posted by birdherder at 5:44 PM on August 20, 2002

mogwai

Corporations have a god-given right to advertisement by any means necessary in this country, doncha know.

Sure they do. I also have the right to block their ads and not frequent crap websites that bombard me with pop-ups and huge Flash ads (like Salon and Slate for example, two websites that I hope go broke because of their moronic ad policies). The beauty of the web is that you can almost always find the same information somewhere else.

Ain't the free market grand?

Another thing that people should do is get a throwaway web based e-mail account and complain to sites that bombard you with pop-ups. I've done this with some of my favorite sites and believe it or not, some actually seemed to listen! Any intelligent business person knows that pissing off potential customers is a very bad thing.
posted by mark13 at 6:39 PM on August 20, 2002

The iCab browser for the Mac, in OS 9 and X flavors has a pop-up killer and will stop web sites from putting their window in the front of all other open windows.
posted by atuafiu at 5:54 AM on August 21, 2002