A Clue?

Bill Hobbs took notice of yesterday's treatise on pop-up ads I was seeing on blogs. Commenters to his post admitted seeing them occasionally, while others said we're all crazy and/or have adware.

I did a little more poking around, and here's how I responded over there:

Good evening. I thought I would follow-up here.

I think the chances of adware are low; as I mentioned at the post on Pop-Up Mocker, I've seen the pop-up ads from two different computers, including one in a highly secure environment where the user cannot install software at all. If it is adware, it's very selective adware; I've seen it only on the two blogs I mentioned, yours and Balloon Juice.

I implied, or tried to, that I suspected it came from an external script called by your template, and when I looked at your page source, I saw the BlogAd script first, which is why I named it.

I would guess it's the free BraveNet counter. Both you and Balloon Juice use the free counter, so it's another external script you share. Also, if you visit the knowledge base for the counter, you can find this insight:
What added features will I receive if I upgrade to Counter/Site Stats Professional?

The Professional Counter/Site Stats service provides these features:
- All banner and popup ads will be removed from your service.
- Your service limit increases to allow you to create 25 counters.
- Ability to turn your Counters invisible.
- Private Statistics allow you to set a password on your statistics page.
- *New* You can now see statistics for up to 12 months!

So that's my working crackpot theory for now: Free Bravenet Counters throw pop-up ads at intervals. I haven't tested to see if it's random intervals, a set number of page loads, or tied to the counter number, but hey, I have a life. I mean, another blog to maintain. That's my additional two cents worth.

A Whodunit!

Ladies and gentlemen, who or what is putting pop-under ads on blogs?

I've seen this happen on occasion for a couple of weeks now. As you know, I surf without pop-up blocking technology in certain situations so that I can explore the seamy underbelly of Internet commerce for you. I've been known to hit a number of blogs on my other blog's blogroll. Once in a while, a click on the blog roll would open a pop-under, too.

The First Time I Saw It

I'd narrowed the behavior to Balloon Juice. Want to see? Here goes:



Note the titlebar to the pop-under, claiming ownership.



An online casino ad! How quaint.

I asked John Cole, proprieter of Balloon Juice, and he had no idea what I was talking about. He uses pop-up blockers and hasn't seen this, and apparently has not sold this particular "space" for his own benefit.

Here are a couple other ads that have popped up while I have enjoyed Cole's commentary:







Here are some URLs to other ads I have seen rotated under Balloon Juice but didn't capture. Enjoy the complete beauty of the animated GIF until their companies issue a cease-and-desist to me:




Now, here's the thing: The pop-unders don't appear on every page load. They show up at random intervals. You can reload the page four or five times, and the pop-under opens only on the sixth. Could this be an intelligent decision on the part of the marketer, who expects blogs to be opened from blogrolls, more than one at a time? It certainly would mask the offending blog, wouldn't it?

And Then I Saw It Again

Last night, I saw Bill Hobbs.com was throwing them:



Again, the titlebar shows the calling page before it loads the HTML for the new page.



It's a common screensaver ad.

Here are two other ads I've seen load under Bill Hobbs' blog:





I contacted Bill Hobbs, and he, too, had no idea. Tonight, I have not seen any pop-unders on his site, although I have certainly spiked his traffic reloading the site.

Could It Be Adware on My Computer?

Yes, it could be. However, I have tried this on two computers, on two networks. One environment features a paranoid guy who refuses to download anything from the Internet, and the other features a professional network administration staff that refuses to let any user, even paranoid guys, download anything from the Internet.

Also, in my rambling amongst blogs and other sites, this behavior is only consistent between these two sites as described above.

Brian J. Speculates

• The ads are rotated, and represent heavily rotated ads. You will see these ads under some mainstream magazine sites and The Drudge Report. However, the casino ads introduce an interesting wrinkle; you won't see those under larger Web sites such as CNN or Fox News.
  
  
• I suspect, but have no proof, that one of the external scripts these guys have in their blog templates is responsible for the pop-unders, and both call BlogAds. Maybe they both embed the same counter or something, but I haven't looked that deeply.
  
  
• Could it be a particularly unscrupuluous advertiser that dishes up pop-unders from a third party to underwrite a portion of their own advertising costs?

Any further answers are beyond my technological ken. Hey, I am a tester by trade, fellows; I see the behavior and I report it and I let those wiser than me figure it out.

So turn off your pop-up blocking technology and go take a look. Make sure I am not crazy.

And bloggers: be careful out there. Make sure no one is piggybacking on your success by stealing advertising revenue from you.

Update: As alluded to in this post, it looks as though BraveNet's started dishing up pop-up ads with their free counters. This campaign seems to be relatively new, but I've seen the ads on Pejmanesque and Asymmetrical Information now, too. Whenever I see the extra window and flashing icon on my taskbar now when opening a blog, I know to look for the Bravenet counter, and so far, it's always been there.

Breaking Free from the Backs of Magazines

Want to make money stuffing pop-under ads? Here's the program for you!



Research group for software analysis....100% free.....financial freedom....profitable and lasting business....

Why are your fingers crossed behind your back, sir?

Note that this ad pops open a complete browser window with address bar and buttons. Amateurs.

Can't Afford Your Own Pop-Up Ad?

Undertone Networks has a deal for you!



For a smaller fee, you can annoy a user only 1/9th as much as a real pop-under ad!

Best of luck, Undertone, mastering the use of character entities to escape that nasty, unrenderable character that permeates this particular sample.

A Pop-Under Odyssey

Recently, while visiting ESPN.com to follow as closely as possible (for an American) the Stanley Cup playoffs, I went on a strange pop-under ad odd-I-see. Come, let me recreate it for you:

On page load, a pop-under opens. It's minimized, see, so I can see it on the taskbar but it's not a regular pop-up sized dialog box. I can't click it and set focus to it or display it because it's only minimize/maximizable. There is no restore. So I right click and maximize it, and I am treated to this beauty:

Whoa! Sorry for the scroll. Is that a 404 from the ad server, or what? Who cares? I right click it and close it, whereupon I am greeted with this offer:



Sweet! One simple inattentive click, ENTER, or press of the space bar and suddenly I'm searching with the unfamous qsrch.com. So I click No, whereupon another ad displays:



Angelina Joile in a Riddler blindfold. I've had dreams like that, but I don't want to lose the PG-13 rating on this blog, so I'll keep them to myself.

The whole thing illustrates how Internet sites that pad their underline with ad revenue from pop-up ads really don't audit the ads that display, nor do they approve or even pay attention to the content and behavior of advertisements that their sites spawn. If I were in marketing for these sites, I would carp incessantly about the difficulties of building a brand when you're letting taggers pay for advertising on the side of your building.

Of course, my marketing assistant alter-ego would have been gone in the first round of layoffs, but hey.

Won, Received for Participation in Our Program, You Say Tomato, I Say Potato

Here you go, you're a winner!



You win if you do the dastardly things we want you to! No purchase necessary since you're not using legal tender, you're bartering your immortal soul! Muhahaha!

Also, you idjits have used the wrong article in your titlebar.

Thank you! I am here all week.

Yes, I Know

The fact that Blogspot dishes up innumerable Google ads for products that "block" pop-up ads in the banner at the top of the page is not lost upon me.

Still, this site is Pop Up Mocker, not Banner Mocker, not Spam Mocker. So deal with it. It's free for both of us.

Also, do not trust the banner ads nor the downloads which promise to block pop-ups, either.

Thank you, that is all.