Pop-up ads

Despite the theoretically excellent pop-up controls on this computer, every so often there will be a short burst of ads that I have to stop and close. Sometimes the computer gets so het up trying to run them that it has no memory to spare for what I'm actually doing and will sit for a minute or two straining desperately to open the pop-up that I immediately close when it appears, feeling a little guilty for wasting all of the computer's hard work.
But what really puzzles me is the efficacy of these silly pop-ups anyway. How many people rush to get their free two coupons to Appleby's or try to catch a fly that will lower their mortgage rates. I myself have opened a pop-up once, by accident, because apparently the close button on it was actually a clever lure, but I escaped it moments after the unfortunate link occurs.
And another thing- why don't they read my profile or something? As an 18 year old female, I don't need to be offered mortgages or wrinkle cream or baldness lotions or anything like that. Gosh. At least offer me cars or music or whatever teenagers of my age bracket are stereotyped to want, or better still actually check out my personal interests that I had to fill out in that annoying juno profile back when I got my identity.
Back when we had free juno internet, it made sense to be given pop-ups and the loss of time seemed only fair considering they were paying for our access. But now that we got real internet, a recent breakthrough at my home, one feels that the pop-ups are like mosquitos or something who have entered your home and I'm starting to hate any company that inflicts them upon me and deciding never to buy anything from them, not that I have any urge to use any of those companies anyway. It makes me wonder if these pop-up ads actually work as effectual advertising or if they are secretly created by the company's rivals to turn the public against them, unaware that the first company is doing the same against them, accomplishing nothing in their sinister plots except annoying the heck out of innocent internet users around the world.