Adblock Plus Now Sells Ads

Ryuzaki

Ryuzaki

お前はもう死んでいる
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"Where There is Always an Ulterior Motive!"​

The "good guys" fighting the "good fight" have show their true colors.

Adblock Plus is launching a new service that allows advertisers to sign up to replace the obnoxious ads that people are trying to block with less obnoxious ads:
  • Too big? These are smaller.
  • Too ugly? These are pretty.
  • Too intrusive? These aren't.
They plan on opening an Ad Marketplace where the blog and website owners can approve of which ads to show Adblock users.

Because Adblock thinks they know what's an acceptable ad in their user's minds.
​
The new marketplace opens in beta today. You get to keep 80% and they keep 20%.

The jokes write themselves. ​

Adblock is literally trying to start an advertising network, 100% against their supposed philosophy, by hurting first hurting their future customers and then strong-arming them for 20% of their revenue.

I hope there's a giant backlash within their userbase where they finally realize that they, in fact, are the product.

Led like lambs to the slaughter. Betrayed and being lied to right to their faces even as the butcher sharpens his blade. Not even worth being propagandized to, just bullshitted at. Congrats to all the idiot publishers who helped make this a reality, and to any of them that sign up for this service, which they will.
 
Here's their website where they explain what acceptable ads are:


Here's some of the nonsense they're pushing...

Placement

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^ That one placement is worse than having an ad above the fold before the title of the article?

Distinction

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Your ad must be pretty, but you must make the entire page ugly with inverted colors so it's obvious there's an ad there.

And so on...

Of course they go on to list the obvious stuff like no auto-play vides. But you can see that most of their criteria is being pushed to get them a higher click through rating under the guise of "fighting the good fight."
 
On one hand I am amused at their creativity and ingenuity. On the other hand, I'm just like, whatever, haha. Fuck em.
 
They are going to piss a ton of people off and make a fuck ton of money in the process. Can't hate though, I respect the hustle. They are basically saying fuck off to Google Ads and created their own ad market right in the extension.

Wonder how strict they will be on the ads allowed? If done right you could kill it with people like that. It is a pre-sorted market that hates ads but loves chrome extensions.

Who wants to make a chrome extension that blocks the ads that adblock allows through?

We are about to reach "Ad-ception"
 
Capitalism at it's finest. Welcome to the United States of America - enjoy your visit.

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Ryuzaki said:
Congrats to all the idiot publishers who helped make this a reality
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Are you referring to the masses of spammy and viral websites which post 1,000 Ad blocks on each page and make it difficult to render, let alone navigate the website?

Those websites with auto-play videos, and pop-under ADs? Or the numbskull marketers using SumoMe Welcome Mats upon first visits?

Those people that have flooded their websites with endless http calls to slow-ass AD servers located in the middle of nowhere that take 100 seconds to ping back?

The people that created the environment that CREATED the DEMAND of an AD-Blocker market to cull the noise so a user can basically navigate a simple website? Those are the publishers you are referring to when you state "idiot" ... right?
 
CCarter said:
Those are the publishers you are referring to when you state "idiot" ... right?
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Yep. Not the actual businesses with respect for their audience that understand it costs more to acquire a user than to keep one around and continue sucking views out of them.

The idiots with ads that slide up the bottom of every image, slide in on the right and start auto-playing a video while the pop under is also loading a live cam stream, with 18 levels of waterfall ads loading behind the scenes, which all freeze up before the welcome mat appears that has no way obvious way of closing it, but when you find it and click the X another pop up appears for some random recipe site, that has an exit intent pop up and a confirmation pop up forcing me to agree to leave the site.

Those idiots are hurting everyone's revenue. Then you have idiots like Facebook and Instagram who allow them to exist for years on end as they suck advertising cash out of them, and only later agree to ban them after having collectively help hurt the industry.

There's very few innocent parties in the mix except the users and the honest businesses. Then, like Hollywood, the user's have seen so many dog shit movies that they've lost faith in the industry, so when a really good movie/site comes across their desk, they're too skeptical to go to the theater/disable the ad blocker.

And let's be realistic. Nobody whitelists sites.

For me, I don't care on a personal level. Ads represent... 1/30th of my revenue. I've got more sense than to rely on bottom-of-the-barrel monetization for non-micro sites. It can work great for those, but even then there's always something better.

However, it truly is going to hurt some publishers that are worth having around that won't survive any other way that never crossed this line of too many ads. Which is great too. While they starve for cash I'll offer them some for them juicy links.

I'm all about some free-market. It's where innovation comes from and dumb shit gets choked out and left in the gutter. This pressure is great. I hate it for the innocent bystanders.

The hypocrisy is what's amusing. Can't wait for the jimmies to rustle among the users. uBlock Origin and these others are poppin' bottles today.
 
Always was thinking about Adblock's real motivations (where is the real $ ? ) It was impossible for me to accept this strange "fact" that they are doing it pro bono. And here it is baby, they are finally moving forward and going out of the shadows, and for good this time.

In 2011 AdBlock Plus and Eyeo attracted considerable controversy from its users when it introduced an "Acceptable Ads" program to allow "certain non-intrusive ads" (such as Google AdWords) to be allowed (whitelisted) under the extension's default settings. While participation in the whitelisting process is free for small websites, large advertising companies are required to pay a fee.[11]Whitelisting was enabled by default for AdBlock Plus users. Developers have launched competing adblockers such as uBlock which do not have Acceptable Ads programs.
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This is some top notch guerrilla marketing IMHO, and a very effective strategy to enter this business. Maybe it wasn't meant to be that way right from the beginning, but it looks like it is.

To sum it up, does blocking ads mean that the money streams on the Internet will dry out? I don’t think so, that would only happen if the amount of money to be distributed becomes smaller — and I don’t see any reason why this should happen. But the distribution pattern might very well change, with the effect that those who really deserve it (don’t inflate statistics by putting unreasonable numbers of ads into web pages, don’t trick users into clicking on ads and don’t annoy users in general) would earn more money.
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https://adblockplus.org/blog/ads-dont-generate-money

It looks like Wladimir Palant never said that he hates ALL ads, just those annoying ones. Anyway, nothing big happens because this doesn't affect users who don't use adblock (not directly at least), and those who want to use it can chose to accept or not so-called "acceptable" ads.

Even those so-called "acceptable" ads will be forced to evolve in order to bring best ROI, that might be a good kick starter for some new interesting ideas...
 
Looks like the launch is off to a rocky start...

While the company said that its Acceptable Ads Platform would supply ads from Google and AppNexus, it turns out that it was merely relying on a go-between company (ComboTag) to get those ads. It hadn't asked the underlying ad providers about a deal -- and now, they want out. Both Google and AppNexus are ending their associations with ComboTag, leaving Adblock Plus without much of a leg to stand on.
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https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/14/adblock-plus-ad-network-loses-support/?sr_source=Twitter
 
Damn. They got strong armed out of their strong arm tactics. I guess they should have seen that coming.
 
jakesnke said:
Looks like the launch is off to a rocky start...



https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/14/adblock-plus-ad-network-loses-support/?sr_source=Twitter
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Sure...

Ad blocking is a symptom of bad ads online and that's why we believe the industry needs to align around a standard--backed by data and insights from conversations with real consumers--for what constitutes a better ads experience online."
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Well, in my understanding all of this means that Google want's to be the one who decides what ads are good, or bad (they like to be in charge, don't they? )

Lets see what's happen next, maybe Microsoft is going to be interested in adblock? In my opinion they certainly should.

Or Google is preparing ground for negotiations? :smile:
 
Adblock has cost G a LOT of money. We're not talking about a publisher here; this is across millions and millions of sites, with a wide range of CPC's. Then you've got G's network partners filling pretty much all other ad space impressions.

"Google Saved An Estimated $887 Million By Paying Adblock Plus"

"In March, Google blocked the Adblock Plus app from Google Play" (Later unblocked because they got shit over censorship ethics)

It doesn't even surprised G would take actions against them. Whether admitting to certain things or not, sabotage, etc.

Imagine being a $500 Billion dollar company, and being told by a small plugin company that created a product that installs a browser you own... (Sure there's other browsers), that this is how things are going to operate. LOL.

If I was at G and I caught wind ABP was trying to get this plan in motion... I'd cut any 3rd party relationship working with them completely off. ABP is still a competitor of G, even if not in the direct sense. Their cutting into profits one way or another. G doesn't even have to agree to it. ABP is just an annoying mosquito that won't go away and wants to leech.
 
Anyone familiar with any of the big Facebook skin apps(PageRage/ect) from a few years ago? And what happened to the in court?

Well for anyone that doesn't know, they were programs so you could change the way Facebook looked for you. They also injected ads into Facebook and sold them on Rubicon mostly. Facebook's lawyers established in court that changing the way the site looks is just fine(such as blocking ads), injecting 3rd party ads into it for profit is not. They got 9-10 figure judgments and wiped these companies out.

AdBlock is going to put themselves out of business if they manage to get this program going. Because soon as they run it for a month or two they are handing a lawsuit for significant damages to every large publisher that hates them. They did not hire a firm to do the proper legal research on this.
 
miketpowell said:
...

AdBlock is going to put themselves out of business if they manage to get this program going. Because soon as they run it for a month or two they are handing a lawsuit for significant damages to every large publisher that hates them. They did not hire a firm to do the proper legal research on this.
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I woudn't be soo sure about this. They are just working out their plan. Sure, they have BIG competitors, who hates them, but so what? Google got beaten up lately by EU, the same could happen in regards to any new plan they might have in their file.

significant damages
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... Must have some basis in law as well. I don't think Adblock is going out of business... IMO they are going to be bought by bigger player in 6 months time.
 
I thought this was always the big plan from the beginning with ABP, maybe not the ad exchange, but letting acceptable ads through. I suppose the exchange was only a natural extension once they had enough trust from their users.
 
Andrewkar said:
I woudn't be soo sure about this. They are just working out their plan. Sure, they have BIG competitors, who hates them, but so what? Google got beaten up lately by EU, the same could happen in regards to any new plan they might have in their file.

... Must have some basis in law as well. I don't think Adblock is going out of business... IMO they are going to be bought by bigger player in 6 months time.
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On one hand I agree, it seems unlikely Adblock is going to just disappear. They aren't that small anymore but I don't see how they can legally do this at all in the US.

However I'm not talking about Google suing them, big publishers that hate them like Forbes. It's already established through US case law that a plugin changing content of a website is fine and you can even charge for it. However you cannot take someone else's content and display it next to your ads to make money. AdBlock is trying to do exactly what PageRage was doing. PageRage I believe was also much bigger than AdBlock even if not as well known in the tech community. They were doing north of 30m/month when they peaked. Facebook's lawsuit wiped them completely out.

There are ALOT of plugins/programs that do this but they have to keep it completely under-wraps and have to trick exchanges into taking the impressions.

To me it just seems like AdBlock is completely unfamiliar with this concept of established US copyright law. If AdBlock could legally do this ISPs/cable/computer makers would all have been doing this already.
 
@miketpowell thank your for this info. I see your point. On that basis it looks like Adblock should be in big trouble however, this case is different than FB vs PageRage. People who are using Adblock are already against annoying ads, not just ads from one website, but from ANY website Adblock can block. This case is touching aggressive marketing practises via ad display, so it also can looks like Adblock is working twords better public experience on the webs. Now I'm not sure about this 100%, but if Adblock give its users options to block all ads, or allow just the ones that Adblock perceives as non-intrusive (even if they are supplied by them) it could go in favour of Adblock. With current politics and where our world is heading, I can see Adblock becoming an entity that is filtering bad ads, and leaving only the ones that are perceived by them as the "good" ones. Also, I don't think Adblock can win a case against lobbying of soo many huge companies against them, but again, in current climate and taking into account this specific situation I woudn't rule out Adblock's victory (if there will be a case at all). For example Forbes, they could block access to their services to anyone using Adblock (or similar), just like Yahoo did to its email users, but is this in their best business? Taking into account current climate and growing market of ad-blockers it's probably not.

What @Ryuzaki said is on point in my opinion. Adblock is just a result of annoying ad marketing. People don't want to see annoying ads, and Adblock is a solution. By the way, personally I think it all should be left to the free market judgement, and deals between companies involved.

However you cannot take someone else's content and display it next to your ads to make money
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This is unclear situation. Looking from different perspective, I can display ads controlled by me on any content my user is watching, and want me to do this, with his/her permission. If company supplying this original content don't like it, well... I just took control over their users, but if they want to talk about this I'm open for propositions. Optionally they can block users who are using my service (just like Yahoo mail did). No one is stopping them from doing that.
 
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