The biggest potential impact will come this summer when Microsoft releases its Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, which will add a pop-up blocker and many other features to Internet Explorer. For now, Microsoft says Internet Explorer will not block pop-ups unless users enable the feature.
Still the prospect of nearly ubiquitous pop-up blocking unsettles some big advertisers.
"I don't want to see pop-ups blocked," said Matthew Coffin, head of LowerMy-Bills.com, a site that sells long distance and other services.
Pop-up and pop-under advertisements, he said, attract more people than any other advertising format.
"People wouldn't click if they weren't interested," he said.
The decline of pop-ups, he said, is all the more troublesome because it comes after the company had to slash use of e-mail advertising in response to the public backlash against spam. As a result, the company is moving to older forms of marketing.
"I'm very gung-ho on TV ads," he said.
Smaller Web publishers have fewer alternatives. Many independent Web sites are part of networks that pay them US$3 to US$5 for every thousand pop-ups they display.
"These pop-up blockers, as they become too widely used, will definitely cut into my income," said William Smith, who runs 40 Web sites from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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