AdBlock is a legitimate publisher’s nightmare because it blocks out their main sources of revenue. Sure the lure of an ad-free online browsing experience is enough to win people over but what many don’t understand is that most publishers, particularly those working on a small scale, depend heavily on revenue from sources like AdSense. AdBlock also eats into the revenues of ad serving companies but some have been able to get around it by paying the company that made AdBlock.
Financial Times reports today that among the ads that are being let through AdBlock Plus filters are Bing search ads from Microsoft and even the “recommended links” box by Taboola. The scribe says that this is due to a deal between these companies and Eyeo, the company behind AdBlock, which takes money to put them on a whitelist.
Being on the whitelist means that ads from these companies can get through while all other advertisements get blocked. Google pays AdBlock too for precisely this purpose.
Eyeo hasn’t shied away from taking up the topic of this whitelist. It coined the “acceptable ads” term to explain that while this does let ads through, internet users only see ads that are not too aggressive, and that this practice encourages companies to make their ads more discreet.
AdBlock Plus is optional for users so they can still decide to go with the conventional form of this filter and block all advertisements.
However Eyeo points out that this program allows them to support websites that rely on these advertisements for revenue but “choose to do it in a non-intrusive way.”
Filed in . Read more about Ads, Bing (Microsoft) and Microsoft.