The man who invented the pop-up windows with advertising, regrets his invention

Who among the users of the Internet has never in their life encountered pop-up windows that display banner ads? I think that such people simply do not exist. But who is behind this generation of advertising business, and what does he think over the years about his invention?

Invented pop-up advertising banners American Ethan Zuckerman in the mid-90s of the last century. He now heads the information center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in the 90s he worked for Tripod.com, which was a pioneer in creating the first online communities and banner networks.

Ethan was given the task: to make the most efficient system for generating profits by visitors to various sites that are popular on the Internet, and the solution came of itself. He came up with the perfect way to show people promotional offers on top of the window they are currently viewing. So annoying pop-up windows with advertising banners came into being.

“We were faced with the task of analyzing the user's home page in order to show him targeted advertising taking into account his hobbies, all this resulted in the creation of one of the most hated advertising methods today - pop-up windows. - shared Ethan Zuckerman with journalists of the publication The Atlantic. - I wrote with my own hands the code that launched the pop-up window, inside which advertising information was displayed. Now I am very sorry for what I did, because in those years our intentions were exceptionally good. "

Zuckerman also said that one of the advertisers, who represented one of the largest American car manufacturers, also pushed him to create pop-up ads. The advertiser was not satisfied with the fact that its advertising banners were displayed on porn sites, so displaying banners in a separate window from these sites could solve all the problems with the image.

Now pop-up advertising, according to its inventor, does more harm than good. Such means of advertising goods and services only annoy Internet users, rather than pushing them to make purchases. In addition, most experienced users prefer to use special plug-ins for their browsers, allowing them to block pop-up windows and banner ads.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/internet/chelovek-pridumavshij-vsplyvayushhie-okna-s-reklamoj-sozhaleet-o-svoyom-izobretenii.html.