'lot of web sites have started putting the "popups" directly into the page scripts, instead of as linked ads that can be blocked'

I used to use something before the old box died and I started on this new one - can't remember what it was called - but the name Webwasher comes to mind, or was it part of Norton's which I no longer use - it used to allow you to stop ad displays embedded in a page by automatically editing the HTML page before displaying it to put comments around offending lines of code that had links to particular sites and particular external directory structures on external sites like '/ads' ....

Perhaps it's time to go find that again...