A Wired report shows that pop-up ads are going the way of the cheesy synthesized website sound track - relegated to fewer and fewer sites because uses just can't stand them. But, in a big difference, the stalwart sites continuing to sell pop-ups to advertisers aren't the more obscure publishers. They are sites like The New York Times and, CNN and ABC. A media director at Agency.com said his company bought only 20 percent the number of pop-ups they did the year before. He also said there was less and less inventory available. The key influence affecting their ongoing demise has been their decreasing effectiveness, as the average web user is more and more likely to have the pop-ups automatically blocked. Said Agency.com's Eric Valk Peterson, "They are not responding."