Na het slechte jaar 2001 kan het bijna alleen nog maar beter gaan met de online-advertentie industrie, zo lezen we bij internetnews. Na anderhalf jaar teruglopende resultaten is in het derde kwartaal van 2002 de markt voor online adverteren weer gaan groeien. Baanbrekend was de opkomst van de betaalde links in search engines. Andere reclamemethoden als spam en pop-ups zijn het afgelopen jaar een van de grootste ergernissen van de internetter geworden. Door de teruggelopen inkomsten wordt deze advertentiemogelijkheid toch weer vaak geboden. Veel internetproviders bieden inmiddels spamfilters en services om pop-ups te blokkeren:
The interactive marketing industry saw spam and pop-ups rise to the top of the list of irritants reported by users.
As Internet users tired of receiving unwanted e-mails for mortgages and Nigerian bank scams, many ISPs responded with enhanced spam filters. The new filters have posed challenges for the industry, which has struggled to make sure its messages are not marked as spam or diverted to a user's bulk mail folder.
Meanwhile, the prolonged online advertising downturn led many publishers to turn to offering pop-up advertisements. Although Nielsen//NetRatings estimate pop-ups (and pop-unders) accounted for just 2 percent of ad impressions in the first seven months of the year, some publishers and ISPs responded to user complaints with anti-pop-up services. EarthLink led the way for ISPs, with AOL following suit. IVillage was the first publisher to declare it would no longer serve third-party pop-up ads, after 92.5 percent of its users fingered them as their biggest irritant.