Here's Why Pop-Up Advertising Was Invented (and Its Creator's Apology)

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Do you know who invented the pop-up window ? This invention is claimed by the American Ethan Zuckerman, now 52 years old. In a 2014 article in The Atlantic, he recounts his experience at Tripod.com, a site he worked for from 1994 to 1999. It was a service that hosted online content and positioned itself as a kind of social network.

“For five years, we tried dozens of revenue models, printing out brilliant new business plans to sell each one”, we read in his article. But ultimately, the business model that funded this service was online advertising.

Pop-up advertising was created to satisfy an advertiser

Pop-up advertising was invented to satisfy an advertiser who did not want their banners to appear next to user-generated content, which could be sensitive. So the idea was to have a visible ad that appeared on another page.

“I wrote the code to launch the window and show an ad in it,” says Ethan Zuckerman. But in hindsight, he realized that this was a mistake. “Along the way, we ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolbox,” the article reads. The post, titled “The Internet’s Original Sin”, is actually a mea culpa of sorts. “I’m sorry. “Our intentions were good,” writes the former Tripod.com employee, regarding pop-up ads.