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Adblock Plus Comes (Somewhat) Clean About How Acceptable Ads Work (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: The Acceptable Ads program from Adblock Plus has proven slightly controversial. The company behind the ad blocking tool, Eyeo, has already revealed a little about how it makes money from the program - despite the fact that no money changes hands in most whitelisting cases - and today it has opened up further about how is makes its money.
Whilst recognizing that people do want to block ads, Eyeo is also aware that sites do need to benefit from ad revenue - hence Acceptable Ads, non-intrusive ads that it is hoped are less irritating and therefore easier to stomach. But Eyeo itself also wants to make money. How does it decide which company to charge to Acceptable Ads whitelisting, and which to charge? If you're expecting full transparency, you might be disappointed, but we are given a glimpse into how the financial side of things works.
Whilst recognizing that people do want to block ads, Eyeo is also aware that sites do need to benefit from ad revenue - hence Acceptable Ads, non-intrusive ads that it is hoped are less irritating and therefore easier to stomach. But Eyeo itself also wants to make money. How does it decide which company to charge to Acceptable Ads whitelisting, and which to charge? If you're expecting full transparency, you might be disappointed, but we are given a glimpse into how the financial side of things works.
It's colored differently and has an 'ad' flag.... At any rate the "Acceptable Ad" thing just sounds too much like the kind of stuff Yelp is accused of, which sounds like what the Mafioso used to do... I know it's popular to hate on advertisers but I'm kinda with them on this. You know. Nice web site ya got heres. Be a shame if anything happened to it...
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Let's chat about this after ad revenue has dropped far enough for the advertising networks to fully understand how much our satisfaction is a factor in their success.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
We're now getting into a war similar to the spam war. The advertisers are going to shout louder and louder. The technical experts are going to block harder and harder. We're already at the stage of having adblock-block-blockers. The advertisers will soon try to get laws to make these illegal, if they haven't already. This will get nasty for the normal users and cause a collapse similar to the collapse of News Net. We will be able to use the internet but new users will be stuck on particular closed sites like Facebook.
The path out of here needs someone independent of the advertisers to agree on criteria for safe, accetpable, reasonable advertising (no tracking, no popping up, no taking over the whole page, no active elements). It can't be done by people like the IAB or government advertising agencies who are in the pockets of the worst elements of the advertising industry. It won't work to completely ban advertising except, possibly, by having your teleco provide control it which is almost more scary.
Right now Eyeo's Acceptable Advertising program seems to be the only game in town. Google and the new ad replacing browser are the alternatives. It needs our support until something better comes along.