Next time you come to this page your entire screen will become dark and a little man on video will appear and start talking to you really loudly as you desperately hunt for the X to turn him off. Just kidding, this blog wouldn't do something like that, we're not media vulgarians here. For a while it seemed things had settled down with annoying pop-ups, after the dot com era, when failed businesses were soul searching and consultants told them consumers were turned off by these distractions from content. With the gradual "improvements" in streaming media and the ubiquity of Flash players in browsers, the wisdom now seems to be, "Yeah but we'll make our pop-ups so entertaining people will like them."
Josh Marshall's ever-worsening blog, sorry, news portal, now features video ad pop-ups that roam around your screen.
Of course pop-ups never went away on the cruder sites, they just became less of a pain as blockers became standard issue in browsers. We're talking here about the media brahmins who kept their temples austere for as long as they could but are gradually resorting to carnival barkerdom as times get tough. Only the low-overhead solo shops can afford to stay bland, elegant, and gimcrack-free.
[edited slightly since initial posting]