The booming growth in online advertising, which has helped fuel the Internet economy while annoying legions of Web surfers, is being challenged by a fast-growing category of computer programs that is poised to become the mute button of the computer age.
Going under such names as WebWasher, InterMute and AtGuard, the programs automatically eliminate all advertising from Web pages, fulfilling the consumer dream of entertainment unfettered by the intrusions of Pampers and Rogaine.
The emergence of these ad blockers has marked the consumer backlash against the pulsating, candy-colored wave of advertising that has spread across the Internet, slowing the surfing experience to a dog-paddle pace at times.
"They are a symbol of people saying, 'I'm not going to take it anymore,' " said Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group software consulting firm.
The ad blockers, many of them available for a free trial download at the developer's Web site, are becoming a standard part of software tool kits sold to speed up Web surfing. In the last few months, such established companies as Siemens of Germany and WRQ Inc., a Seattle maker of networking software, have introduced ad blocker programs, lifting the product into the software mainstream.
International Microcomputer Software Inc. of Novato, Calif., a producer of consumer and business software, will bring out its ad blocker in the next month to join the dozen products on the market.
Although ad blockers are still a niche product, they exert pressure on advertisers to reevaluate the strategy that has made ads more intrusive. The changes could duplicate the effect that the mute button had in reshaping television advertising from a preachy minute of spiels to a quick-cutting flood of images.
"It's a new market," said Anne Marshall, marketing manager for AtGuard, an Internet utility program that includes an ad blocker. "The Web sites are in charge now. We just want to give people a choice. This is an opportunity for people to have the Internet the way they want it."
Online advertising firms dismiss the ad blockers as a minor fad that will eventually become irrelevant as high-speed Internet connections make their way into the home. With faster connections, even advertisements that require large amounts of data, like a full-motion video of exploding soup cans, could be sent across the Web in seconds.
