‘Sorry for the Trouble’ Says the Inventor of the Pop-Up Ad

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Ethan Zuckerman is a hated man on the Internet. Not so much by his name, for most users have no clue to who he is, but by his creation; the pop-up ad. Zuckerman was the original coder for the now-infamous and much disliked pop-up advertising.

“We ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: the pop-up ad,” says Zuckerman. “I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good.”
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The best intentions and all that jazz..Just going to point out that at no point could it be argued that anyone would actually like ads much less those that popped up.
 
That's ok, the problem was solved by putting ads on the webpage itself. That'll teach you people to mess with the best. You can block pop up ads but you can't block ads in webpages. Wait, you can?

Aqua-Teen-Hunger-Force-Popup-Ads.jpg
 
oh, I just love the ones that play video. That can't be using that much bandwidth.
 
So what good intentions were there to begin with? It was always going to be hated.
 
Meanwhile the rise of HTML5 has led to a resurgence of Pop-ups ...and not just for plain jane ads either...

-NY times "you've reached your reading allotment as a free visitor, please buy a sub to support our dinosaur of a company"
-Ebay "4 people are watching this an hour, oh did you want to see that picture of the item this is floating over top?"
-Everything else "DO YOU LIKE OUR SITE? WILL YOU TAKE A SURVEY?"
 
Pkirk618 said:
oh, I just love the ones that play video. That can't be using that much bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and then the website owners get all up in arms when people use adblock software because it's "hurting their revenue" and "not displaying the page the way they intend it to be seen". Well, I don't have to visit your website, and it's my computer so I'll be the one that controls what data goes through its hardware, and for users that have bandwidth caps and penalties, streaming ads can end up costing them money. Besides, users have a legal obligation to control what content they have go over their machines. If the government finds kiddie porn on a user's hardware the user goes to jail. Good luck blaming it on a popup ad on that shady website you were visiting. They don't care. Same with the RIAA and MPAA suing you. Download music or a video and you're responsible, right? Well then don't complain when people filter.

Oh, and Kyle, I know you won't like that post there because it's pro-adblocking, but I'm not talking about the [H]. You guys do it right. I'm talking about the sites that force streaming ads and popups and throw a million doubleclick cookies before you can even see what the hell site you just clicked on, and then when you try to leave the site you get more popups. You know, sites not really worth visiting that you run across by clicking a link that just end up annoying the spork out of you. It's no fun when you're trying to find information on some obscure technical problem and you end up on a useless click bait ad site with circular links to search terms its regurgitated.
 
Pop-up ads don't bother me as much as news sites that separate their articles into 30 pages for no fucking reason other than clicks.

CHECK OUT THIS TOP 10 LIST...

::has to on 10 links with ads in between::
 
Someone send him a virus to perpetually inundate his PC with Comic Sans fonted popups. Another "invention" that should die.
 
this guy should deserve an award like;

"Lifetime Achievement Award for Trolling and Douchery"


Seriously
 
Ashbringer said:
That's ok, the problem was solved by putting ads on the webpage itself. That'll teach you people to mess with the best. You can block pop up ads but you can't block ads in webpages. Wait, you can?

Aqua-Teen-Hunger-Force-Popup-Ads.jpg
Click to expand...

He will henceforth be know as the Internet wwyzzzzarddd!
 
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