Adblock Plus, the popular online ad blocking software, will now be starting an ad platform for publishers which will allow them to choose from a marketplace of pre-whitelisted advertisements that they can drag and drop onto their sites.
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To their credit, the company has set out some criterias that they deem are “acceptable ads”, which are basically non-invasive and aren’t meant to disrupt the use of the website.
“It allows you to treat the two different ecosystems completely differently and monetize each one”, Ben Williams, Adblock Plus’ operations and communications director told The Verge.
“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”. Adblock Plus plans to form a non-profit committee – made up of stakeholders ranging from ad tech companies, publishers, journalists, academics, and consumer champions – that will act as an independent review board for the program. Opponents have likened whitelisting to “extortion” because some publishers have to pay the company a fee to let their ads be seen.
Publishers can sign up for the marketplace and – voilá – users see more ads.
Publishers or advertisers can submit ads for approval in AdBlock Plus’ whitelist.
The browser now runs on more than 100 million active devices and less than 10 percent of AdBlock users opt not to view any ads.
Yesterday, Williams announced a new version of the Acceptable Ads Program, which will be available as a marketplace for website operators. After enough people complained of Adblock Plus’ hypocrisy and villainy, the company scrambled to inform users that they can still choose to block absolutely all ads, including ones from the Acceptable Ads Platform.
Over a quarter of U.S. internet users now employ online ad-blocking software on their desktop computers, according to recent research commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
AdBlock Plus users can disable the “non-intrusive advertising” with the option here, but there is no way of knowing if this could be removed in the future.
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The Acceptable Ads Platform is dubbed to offer several improvements to its feedback mechanism, the way in which the mechanism will turn real-time bidding (RTB) on its head.
