Pop Go the Ads With Auric Systems Software

Internet surfers who long for more advertisements as they click from Web site to Web site are in luck: A Pasadena company has developed software that allows Internet service providers to send pop-up ads to their customers.

Pop-up ads are already a popular form of advertising on Web sites. They are considered more effective than passive banner ads because a user must click on a pop-up ad to make it go away.

Now Auric Web Systems is leasing software to ISPs that will let them sell pop-up ads too.

“People are so used to this stuff,” said Robert Cook, Auric’s executive coordinator. “It’s already happening. Now it’s going to be coming from the ISP, not just the Web site.”

While that notion might make some Internet users groan, Cook touted the ads as a way to allow small and medium-sized ISPs to earn enough revenue to stay in business. Each Internet service provider can customize its own ads, but Cook said he expects the pop-up ads to appear only while Net surfers are jumping between Web sites and waiting for pages to load. “It will not interrupt your browsing,” he said.

For the base price of $500 a month, ISPs can lease all the necessary software to serve between 1,000 and 2,000 users. The ISPs are responsible for selling their own ads.

Auric customers in Japan have been using the service for more than a year, and the 7-year-old company set up its own Internet service with a few thousand customers in Pasadena to test the system here.

“They don’t seem to notice much of a difference” between the pop-up ads coming from Auric and the ones generated by Web sites, Cook said.