Google, Amazon, Microsoft Reportedly Paid AdBlock Plus To Unblock

RoccamOccam writes with the following news from The Register: Internet giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola have reportedly paid AdBlock Plus to allow their ads to pass through its filter software. The confidential deals were confirmed by the Financial Times, the paper reported today [Paywalled]. From the Register's article: Eyeo GmbH, the German startup behind Adblock Plus, said it did not wish to comment. So far more than 300 million users have downloaded its software, it said. The add-on is free to download, with Eyeo generating revenue through its "whitelisting" programme. Companies can request their ads to be unblocked as long as they comply with AdBlock's "acceptable ads" policy. Large companies pay a fee for the service.

Comments

Adblock Edge

[Anonymous Coward]

'nough said.

Re:Adblock Edge

[Vyse of Arcadia]

Mod parent up, even though he/she/it is an AC. Adblock Edge is a fork of AdBlock Plus that removes all the acceptable ads nonsense.

Re:Adblock Edge

[TuringTest]

ÂBlock (read as "micro-block") has smaller memory footprint than AdBlock (and therefore Adblock Edge), and can use the same major privacy lists (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's Ad Server).

Two different products

[Russ1642]

AdBlock - good. AdBlock Plus - crap.

Opt-out

[pr0nbot]

I'd assume (without further info) that this is about the "allow some non-intrusive advertising" checkbox you get in the filter options. It's on by default, but when you install adblock (as I did a few days ago) it one of the things you go through when the configuration dialog pops up.

It links to: https://adblockplus.org/en/acc...

It's not perfect in that it's on by default, but it's easy enough to disable. Perhaps they could improve it by tying this checkbox to your "do not track" preference?

Re:No facebook?

[pmontra]

I'm also a Firefox user, with AdBlock. I disabled the acceptable ads checkbox so I don't see any ad (I would have noticed). If AdBlock makes any money out of the ads companies, good for them. If they force acceptable ads to everybody, I'll move to something else. uBlock seems to be as good. There will always be something to block all ads. At worst the hosts file.

Re:Company does exactly what it says it does...

[the_other_chewey]

In the past the end user can still opt to not see any ads, even if they comply with the "acceptable ads" policy. This would be news if they are making a change so that the end user is forced to see a given ad that the advertiser pays extra for, regardless of their extension settings.

They are not.

Re:Ask yourselves these questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Your host file junk pretty much blocked me access to the internet, had to go in safe mode to get rid of it, so screw you.

Advertising Bubble?

[Moof123]

Craziness in the ad space has all the feel of being a ginormous bubble. Companies who have a business model of selling banner ads via an app and have no other revenue sources seem especially precarious to the perception of advertising effectiveness. If at some point studies come out showing banner ads are as ineffective as I think they are (I think they are a net negative to most companies who use them) the rug could get pulled out from the whole mess.

People are getting trained to filter this stuff out left and right. I find myself avoiding google when I look for certain things because I know that if they are common I will have to wade through a page or more of paid up links that are mostly only tangentially related to what I am looking for. I can't recall the contents of any recent banner ads, and there are a number of sites I just don't visit on my ipad because they are so awful without AdBlock running.

How about a new Kickstarter campaign where we pool our money to buy up highway billboard space and put up pretty murals instead of ads?

Re:a layered approach is always best.

[c]

if this action by ABP is in fact happening, a fork of the project should most certainly be considered as this 'whitelisting' violates an expected feature or function of the application by its community of users (and possibly developers.)

It's actually pretty old news.

That being said, I don't recall ever seeing one of those acceptable ads due to the other measures I use like noscript/scriptsafe, so I can't really comment on how acceptable they are.

Re:Company does exactly what it says it does...

[quantaman]

"Companies can request their ads to be unblocked as long as they comply with AdBlock's "acceptable ads" policy. Large companies pay a fee for the service."

How is this news? Seriously, how?

A product that purports to block ads accepts money to show you ads.

I'm sure some people have heard of it before but it's most definitely newsworthy.

Re:Company does exactly what it says it does...

[flappinbooger]

So... this isn't news?

I can click a 'switch' and turn off 'acceptable ads' and it's been that way for a long time now.

So maybe it IS news because I didn't know/realize/take the time to think about the fact that they make money off this.

Good for them. They deserve to eat too. Adblock Plus is reliable and makes the internet tolerable and safer. Letting through some 'GRAS' ads for cash is fine with me. As long as there is a switch where I can turn them off too...

(Generally Regarded as Safe)