Do you remember Tripod? Founded in 1995, Tripod was a pioneer in the user-generated content market, now dominated by Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. When you signed up for a Tripod account you could create a free website with all kinds of totally cool HTML 2.0 tricks like blink and marquee and it introduced pop-up ads.
Tripod was one of the original web destinations, including GeoCities and Angelfire trying to build online communities. Like all web properties, the site struggled to monetize the site. At first, the site relied on banner ads to fund the site. Banner ads were pioneered in 1994 by Hotwired (a long-gone online addition to Wired magazine). Even in the 1990s, online advertising was not popular.
The banner ads got in the way of the content. Advertisers were not always happy with the pages their banners appeared on. Tripod’s advertising methods changed when, as internet lore recalls, a big car manufacturer was not happy about their ad displaying on a page about sodomy that Tripod was hosting.
Tripod invented pop-up ads
Ethan Zuckerman, one of the original Tripod employees, came up with a solution. He hacked together some code that would open the ad in a separate window. In 1996 he designed a vertically-oriented pop-up window that included navigation tools and an ad for inclusion on web pages.
The separate window would pop up and display promotional content in a new individual browser window that appeared on top of the active browser window. Mr. Zuckerman’s pop-up ad has been adapted and used across all OS’s screens. Mr. Zuckerman says his hack was intended to be less intrusive than inserting an ad into the middle of a user’s homepage.
The “innovation” took off. Pop-ups became one of the most hated forms of online advertisement. Occasionally pop-up ads can be useful – most of the time they are annoying, Some pop-up ads can be dangerous. No matter what the marketers call them, pop-up, pop-under, exit-overlays, exit-intent, click-activated, etc. – nearly 3/4’s of users told Hubspot they dislike “Online pop-ups.”
People’s hate pf pop-ups lead to the development of pop-up blockers. In 2002 Henrik Sørensen published the first pop-up blocker Adblock. The EFF reports that as
Mr. Zuckerman, now at MIT, offered an apology for his role in what the pop-up has become. He wrote, “I’m sorry. Our intentions were good”. He believes that “advertising is the original sin of the web.”
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.