When Browsers Got Pop-Up Blockers

A dated table of the milestones: the Tripod.com origin of pop-up ads in the late 1990s, the Mozilla and Opera blockers of 2002, the Windows XP SP2 release of 2004, and the 44% click-through of the first AT&T banner.

Pop-up ads originated on the Tripod.com webpage hosting site in the late 1990s. The hosting pages carried scripts that opened a second window on top of the page a visitor was reading, and the pattern spread from there to the rest of the web.

The first AT&T banner ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate. That figure shows why advertising kept experimenting with new placements once banner space on a single page was exhausted.

Mozilla introduced its pop-up blocker on 23 September 2002; Opera followed on 13 November 2002, less than three weeks later. The two releases put a working switch in front of mainstream users for the first time.

In 2004 Microsoft released Windows XP SP2, which added pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer. That release covered the largest installed base of the period and made blocking a default expectation rather than an opt-in feature.

In 2016 internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable and broadcast television, a market shift that kept new window formats worth building even after blockers became standard.

• Late 1990s — pop-up ads originate on Tripod.com.
• 23 September 2002 — Mozilla pop-up blocker released.
• 13 November 2002 — Opera pop-up blocker released.
• 2004 — Windows XP SP2 adds blocking to Internet Explorer.
• 2016 — US internet ad revenue surpasses cable and broadcast TV.

Further reading

• Turn On Pop-Up Blocking, Step by Step
• Why Pop-Ups Still Appear