Pop-up advertising is a way for websites to earn money by displaying ads in a separate window that appears on top of the webpage. Ads are often based on the content of the website and can be personalized using tracking cookies. Payment can be based on impressions or click-through traffic, and some websites earn commissions from sales. Pop-up ads can be blocked using browser settings or plug-ins, but marketers are finding ways around these measures. Pop-under ads are less intrusive and appear after the webpage is closed.
Pop-up advertising refers to online ads that appear in a separate window at the top of a web page. When loading a page, one or more pop-ups may appear, which obscure the view of the site and attract the attention of the surfer. Pop-up advertising is one way a website can earn money.
Pop-up advertising is typically delivered by a third-party site and is often based on the content of the website, serving ads that the marketer hopes the reader will be interested in. By clicking on the advertisement, the surfer will be directed to another website where the advertised product or service is marketed and can be purchased.
There are several types of contracts a website could have with an advertising agent for compensation through pop-up advertisements. A website could be compensated for impressions (page views) that don’t require click-through traffic. For example, a website could earn from a few cents to a few US dollars (USD) or more for every 1,000 unique impressions or page views. Click-through traffic can earn a larger amount. The exact amount of money you earn varies widely and depends on many factors.
Some websites choose to be affiliated with certain products or services. The site will host pop-ups or other forms of advertising, but payment is based solely on commission. Commissions are generated from click-through traffic that results in a sale.
Many advertisers use profiling (collected from tracking cookies) to serve a surfer with personalized pop-up ads based on sites the surfer has previously visited or on advertisements the surfer has previously clicked on. Some surfers find the profiling invasive, while others find pop advertising simply annoying and will automatically close the ads as soon as they appear. Knowing this, less scrupulous marketers use buttons that look like “close” buttons but actually perform other functions. Clicking a “close” button could actually allow the remote server to install adware or malware. For this reason, some surfers don’t click on ads at all, instead relying on ad-blockers to prevent pop-up ads from appearing.
Another type of pop-up advertising is the pop-under ad. These ads are loaded under the webpage using less intrusive strategy. The reader will not see the ad until the web page is closed. Marketers presumably hope that after browsing, the reader will be more likely to give their full attention to the ad.
Virtually all web browsers today have built-in settings to block third-party cookies and pop-up advertising. These controls work for Javascript-based pop-ups, but marketers are always looking for a way around ad-blockers, and many ads are now written in Adobe® Flash®. Flash® blocks are also available, both as internal browser settings and as browser plug-ins, but this results in all Flash® content being blocked. Because Flash® is also used for native content, most Flash® blocks will replace the Flash® content with a clickable button, allowing the surfer to enable only the content they want to see.
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