With the fervor of a newly converted teetotaler, America Online, which swore off selling pop-up advertisements last October, is now giving its users software that will block pop-up ads on other Web sites.
AOL had pioneered the often annoying but effective pop-up format, which opens a new window on the screen covering whatever the user was trying to do.
Over the past two years, many other Web sites have started selling pop-up ads or pop-under ads which become visible after the user closes the main browser window. For many users, pop-ups have joined junk e-mail or spam as one of their biggest online annoyances.
Nielsen NetRatings, a research company, estimates that 3.5 percent of all online advertisements are now pop-ups and pop-unders, a proportion that has leveled off after rising sharply over the past two years.
AOL's strategy with pop-ups changed as its subscriber count in the US started to shrink at the end of last year. Since its advertising revenue, which has plummeted, is not likely to rebound soon, the company's main focus is stemming its loss of subscribers. And blocking pop-ups appears to be one potentially popular move.
"We heard loud and clear that people don't want to surf the Web and have two, three, four windows open up," said Jeffrey Kimball, AOL's vice president for product marketing.
The new AOL software will be automatically installed on computers using the latest version, number 8.0. A button on the bottom of every window in AOL's Web browser will let users turn on or off the pop-up blocking feature. Every time a Web site tries to open a pop-up or pop-under window, the software will make a sound. If the user is curious about the pop-up, another click of the button will make the ad appear.
This software is similar to a program introduced last year by Earthlink, the third-largest Internet service provider, after AOL and Microsoft's MSN.
AOL said that its software is better than that of Earthlink because it blocks ads but does not block pop-up windows with encrypted data, the sort that are used for online banking and shopping transactions. Earthlink's blocking software doesn't make that distinction.
AOL declined to estimate how many users would take advantage of the blocking feature. But it did say that 10 percent of its users have chosen not to receive pop-ups from AOL's own service, an option that has been harder to access than the new blocking software. If such software proliferates, it could inhibit one of the more effective forms of online advertising. Orbitz, the online travel agency, for example, finds that pop-under ads have been one of its best ways of selling airline tickets.
"Some users don't like them," said Geoffrey Silvers, Orbitz's director of e-marketing. "But many people have gone from pop-unders to our site and found a good deal on airfare."
He said Orbitz has tried to make its advertising entertaining and less obtrusive by asking sites to limit the number of times it is displayed on a user's computer. It even sends e-mail to users who complain telling them how to download free pop-up blocking software.
He said that such software and AOL's new approach are good for the market because they give users choices. But he added that the number of sites that will accept pop-ups is increasing, including such sites owned by AOL Time Warner as Mapquest and CNN.com.
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