Fewer pop-ups ahead
NEW YORK — Say goodbye soon to those pop-up ads from Claria Corp.’s oft-vilified ad-targeting technology.
On July 1, Claria will stop running ads generated by its pioneering but highly criticized “adware” programs that monitor where people surf.
Instead, the company will launch PersonalWeb, which generates customized Web portals on the fly so that a user who just checked baseball scores and movie show times might get a page pulling top items from ESPN and Moviefone. Targeted banner ads or sponsored links, rather than pop-ups, would be shown.
“We’ve proven it (targeting) works for advertising, and we are highly confident it will work for content,” said Scott Eagle, the company’s executive vice president.
Claria is currently testing PersonalWeb with about 100,000 people, Eagle said, and is trying to persuade dozens of Web site operators to adopt the personalization technology. The service is expected to launch by early next year.
The decision to shut down the existing ad network comes despite Claria’s failure to find a buyer for its adware assets, as the company had hoped. Eagle said several potential buyers also wanted the targeting technology that Claria is keeping for PersonalWeb.
Although those ads will stop July 1, the company said it will continue to collect data on Web usage until Sept. 30 for research and other purposes unless users remove its ad software, known as GAIN.
The company also warned that the free programs to which GAIN had hitched a ride — among them, file-sharing software like Kazaa and Claria’s own eWallet password-storage program — could stop working as of Oct. 1. The company posted software removal instructions on its site.
Claria’s ads to draw users to PersonalWeb say little about what users would be getting, though they lead to a site with more information. Privacy implications and other details are further explained during installation.
Claria pioneered the adware business with its GAIN software. Critics say adware from Claria and others has become one of the top scourges of Internet use because it can degrade computer performance, track a user’s browsing habits and mysteriously appear on computers without a user’s full knowledge.
Adware is also lucrative, generating more than $149 million for Claria from 1999 to 2003.
Claria, formerly known as Gator Corp., began moving away from adware last year when it started developing PersonalWeb. It pledged in March to leave the business completely by the second quarter.