by David Furritus

Created on: January 17, 2008

Now, let me get this straight: If you blot out a portion of the screen and interrupt my viewing enjoyment of one of the few Tv programs I find worth watching I'll somehow rush out to buy your product or use whatever services you're ramming down my throat? I think not.

I think the concept of pop-up ads started when the US was hosting the World Cup of Soccer back in the early 90s. For those of you that prefer to watch real sports like Football, Hockey, or Baseball I'll explain. In soccer the clock doesn't stop for any reason whatsoever. The game continues even if there's a penalty, a substitution, or even a death on the field (although, they'll add even MORE time onto the end for the time it takes to drag the corpse from the field). As a result, there's no commercial breaks. Well, ABC, ESPN, and Univision still needed to make money from these games so they used little blocks under the 0-0 scores and the timer to show whoever was sponsoring that interminable portion of the game. Thus, the pop-up was born.

Later sporting events started doing more of this, but they would also start doing blatant promotions of products on the field. If you look behind the batter's box of virtually any stadium you'll see a sign that advertises random things and will rotate occasionally to show something else. It's not there for the fans in the outfield that can barely see second base. It's there for the cameras.

But, that still wasn't enough! No, they had to plaster corporate sponsorship on the very games that we were watching. Have you ever noticed that all of the traditional college football bowl games now have a corporate name in front of them?

I'm not to pop-up ads yet, am I? That's because there's more! Oh yes, soon segments of the game were getting sponsored by random companies. You had sponsors of half-time shows, sponsors of the players of the game, and even in-game updates of other games that had corporate sponsors!

In the end though, they knew that fans could still walk away during the commercial breaks and of course, not everyone watches sports programming. So, this is where pop-ups come in. They know that you're watching your favorite show and you're not going anywhere. They know that you can't use your TiVo to fast-forward through the parts you want to watch - so they put it RIGHT ON THE SCREEN where you can't miss it.

It's only a matter of time before they shoot a ray from your Tv that burns an ad straight into your retina and leaves it there for at least 24 hours.

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