> > > Am I supporting the site by viewing pages with ads on, even if I can't see the ads? I can still see the banners but my browser suppresses the pop-ups.
> >
> > Suppressing pop-ups cuts my ad revenue in half. It's not something I make a fuss about, since they *are* annoying, but you asked.
>
> That's interesting. I didn't know whether the purveyors of pop-ups actually knew whether they wound up "popping up" or not. I thought they asked my browser to open a window, and if my browser happened not to open that window nobody was the wiser.
>
> So I've learned something today.

If I understand things correctly, the new window a pop-up opens contains HTML code and images loaded separately from an advertiser's server. If the window is never opened, the code should never be loaded.
The advertiser may be monitoring how much incoming traffic his server gets and only paying those sites that do send requests to his server.
That still doesn't guarantee the user will ever get to see the advertisement, of course - but not loading the advertisement would guarantee it would not be seen.