Going under such names as WebWasher, interMute and AtGuard, the programs automatically eliminate advertising from Web pages, fulfilling the consumer dream of entertainment unfettered by the intrusions of Pampers and Rogaine. The ad blockers are becoming a standard part of software tool kits sold to speed up Web surfing. In the past few months, such established companies as Siemens AG of Germany and WRQ Inc., a maker of network connectivity software, have introduced their own ad blocker programs, lifting the product into the software mainstream. But it is an extreme measure that would eliminate all pictures, which are among the main reasons the Internet has become so popular in the first place.
Some ads still slip through, but for the most part the ad blockers work.
And even for Web users who find it fairly easy to ignore ads, the blockers save them several seconds of waiting for an ad-laden page to load. Online advertising companies dismiss the ad blockers as a fad that will become irrelevant as high-speed Internet connections make their way into the home. With faster connections, even advertisements that require large amounts of data, such as a full-motion video of exploding soup cans, could be sent across the Internet in seconds. The sudden spurt in ad blockers, which first appeared as early as 1995, follows the boom in online advertising over the past four years. At the same time, there have been signs that more people are ignoring the Web ad banners.