World’s biggest ad-blocker launches exchange for ‘acceptable ads’
The world’s most-used adblocker Adblock Plus has made the step towards becoming an ad server itself, launching an exchange which will display only ‘acceptable ads’ to people using its platform.
The idea behind the Acceptable Ads platform is it will show only whitelisted ads – ads that conform to certain technical specifications – to users of the platform in the space where regular advertising would normally appear.
The move is in contrast to Adblock Plus’ stated intentions earlier this year, when Mumbrella interviewed Ben Williams at SXSW and asked him whether he could forsee a time when adblockers would start serving ads to their customers.
He said: “I don’t think it will go so far as becoming an ad network. AdBlock a couple of years ago had a great April Fools joke where they replaced all the ads with cats. And I think if they ever started doing that en masse users would run away in droves. You’ve got to continue to deliver on your USP and then if you occasionally like to joke around or do something for a good cause that is serious I think people will understand that.”
Essentially AdBlock plus are hijacking the monetisation model of traditional publishers with their own. Ethical considerations aside, is this even legal? I had mentioned concerns about this around the time they announced the Amnesty international partnership. Surely it would only be a matter of time before a publisher takes them to court over this.
I wonder how long it will take Google to do a Chrome update which causes a compatibility problem with Adblock Plus..
Many of whom.
Write out one hundred times.