A few people have found themselves locked out of their Yahoomail accounts recently because they are using ad-blocker software.
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A few users in the USA reported that Yahoo Mail was displaying a message asking them to disable their ad-blocker before they could access their inbox.
Yahoo joins a growing list of websites fighting back against ad block software as they depend on revenue from advertisements to finance their operations.
As of now the Yahoo Mail’s blocking of ad blockers is not affecting everyone and probably the feature is just in a testing phase to see how users respond to it. It actually couldn’t be any more obvious.
Ad blockers are big business – according to statistics from PageFair and Adobe, 198 million users are actively using adblocking software globally, and its estimated that their use will cost publishers almost $22 billion during 2015. In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokeswoman said, “At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences”. It started to drive users away: Perhaps we’re all missing a few subtle nuance of the plan, and Mayer somehow hopes to make Yahoo more relevant – via the power of annoyance?
Yahoo’s been struggling for a few time under the leadership of Marissa Mayer to become as relevant in the advertising and content space as contemporaries like Google and Facebook.
The move by Yahoo to keep users from accessing email if they have ad blockers enabled, however, just illustrates one of the ongoing problems with the free lunch the internet provides to most of us.
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Yahoo is reportedly discouraging users of its webmail service from using ad blocking software, by refusing access to emails.
