AdBlock Plus accused of paying off other ad blockers to let some ads through

[Batu69]

The new ad blocker support Apple introduced in its mobile Safari web browser in iOS 9 is causing quite a stir. Publishers are up in arms, worried that users will adopt mobile ad blockers en masse and poke huge holes in their revenue streams. Meanwhile, just one day after Apple released iOS 9 to the public on Wednesday, several ad blocker plug-ins have indeed shot up the charts in Apple’s iOS App Store.

Regardless of which side of the debate you stand on, there’s one thing we can probably all agree on: What AdBlock Plus is doing — if, and only if recent accusations turn out to be true — is both unethical and deplorable.

According to a report on Wednesday published by French blog Info iGen, AdBlock Plus has found a sinister way to profit from Apple’s new ad blocking feature in iOS 9.

AdBlock Plus has a monetization strategy it calls “Acceptable Ads.” The scheme allows AdBlock partners to serve white list ads that the AdBlock Plus plug-in, by default, will not block on computers or mobile devices even while the plug-in is running. As a result, users will still see these ads even if they believe all ads are being blocked, and AdBlock Plus will enjoy a cut of the revenue.

Now, this new report from Info iGen alleges that AdBlock Plus owner Eyeo is paying off other developers that make ad blocking plug-ins to employ the same policy in their own apps. But Eyeo isn’t suggesting companies build their own client lists, according to the report. Instead, Eyeo is supposedly paying out monthly fees to companies if they use AdBlock Plus’ white list and allow Eyeo client ads to escape their ad blockers unscathed.

According to the accusations, AdBlock is paying monthly fees of as much as $5,600 to companies that do not block ads on the AdBlock Plus “Acceptable Ads” white list.

Here’s where things get particularly interesting: this would be an incredibly easy report to deny, but Eyeo has declined several opportunities to deny it. Instead, the company would only say that the report is “not entirely correct.” What does that mean? Does it mean Eyeo is paying other ad blocking companies $6,000 per month and not $5,600?

On the flip side, the company did confirm attempts to contact third-party iOS 9 ad blocker developers in an effort to convince them to allow its clients’ ads through without being blocked. “[AdBlock Plus has] approached a number of independent developers who have expressed their intention to develop an iOS 9 ad blocker to see if they would consider including Acceptable Ads in their solution,” an Eyeo spokesperson told Business Insider.

Of course, he wouldn’t address the terms that Eyeo offered these third-party developers. Source: Info iGen

Source

[dcs18]

AdBlock Plus has a monetization strategy it calls “Acceptable Ads.” The scheme allows AdBlock partners to serve white list ads that the AdBlock Plus plug-in, by default, will not block on computers or mobile devices even while the plug-in is running. As a result, users will still see these ads even if they believe all ads are being blocked, and AdBlock Plus will enjoy a cut of the revenue.

Check out the Adblock Plus guide for the 2 simple steps on overcoming the “Acceptable Ads.” implementation.

[psyko666]

Use uBlock.. ;)

[Petrovic]

Adblockers have found a new business model by making money from allowing advertisements in their user’s browser. The technology that was once invented to provide users an advertisement-free browsing experience is now making money from … advertisements! This has become clear now Adblock Plus offers its technology to other adblock developers for iOS 9.

In the US the adblockers Peace and Purify top the charts of most downloaded apps since iOS 9 was released. Users still see advertisements when using the apps, because the developers are paid by Eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus. The company has developed Acceptable Ads, which whitelists advertisements it considers ‘acceptable’. In order for advertisers to get on the whitelist they have to share their advertising revenues. Google and Microsoft pay a whopping 30% of their advertising revenue to Eyeo.

Developers that make use of Acceptable Ads receive up to $5000 monthly from Eyeo. This means that adblockers no longer benefit from making the best possible product for their users, but now make money from whitelisting as much advertisements as possible.

Source

[clubhouse]

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Why don't you accept donations?
Raymond Hill edited this page Feb 16, 2015 · 15 revisions
Pages 95

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I don't want the administrative workload coming with donations. I don't want the project to become in need of funding in any way: no dedicated home page + no forum = no cost = no need for funding. I want to be free to move onto something else if ever I get tired working on these projects (no donations = no expectations).

Have a thought for the maintainers of the various lists. These lists are everything. This can't be emphasized enough.


And NO white lists!

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[steven36]

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Ublock (origin)..Gorhill....

Why don't you accept donations?

Raymond Hill edited this page Feb 16, 2015 · 15 revisions

I don't want the administrative workload coming with donations. I don't want the project to become in need of funding in any way: no dedicated home page + no forum = no cost = no need for funding. I want to be free to move onto something else if ever I get tired working on these projects (no donations = no expectations).

Have a thought for the maintainers of the various lists. These lists are everything. This can't be emphasized enough.

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Its one thing to take donations because some good addons do but Eyeo gets paid by Google ,Microsoft and others to allow ads trough ..There making so much money they can pay $5000 a mth to other ad blockers so they won't have any competition :lol:

As far ad blocking or anti tracking I only use open source though . This year alone AD Spending Expected To Reach $570 Billion This Year

Eyeo is a sell out and even paying others to sell out and if everyone done it for the money I doubt any adblockers would work at all . If I made and ad blocker for 2 mill id close down lol :)

[Holmes]

This is the original thread that has to do with this and my opinion is they have allowed acceptable ad's for a long time and ublock is not a alternative to adblock plus.

[Holmes]

Ill use adblock plus as I love it I have it set to allow non-intrusive advertising and agree not all ad's are annoying like the ad's on the frontpage and now that I think about it I have whitelisted nsane down and nsaneforums in adblock plus noscript and ghostery and the ad's are not showing up do I have to remove entries from my host file to.

[steven36]

Content has been merged. Also some off topic posts were removed

how is this software news its about mobile adblockers ?

[Holmes]

Adblock plus is not just a mobile adblocker and if it was only a mobile adblocker technically it is software and is software news *face palm*.

[dcs18]

[steven36]

Adblock plus is not just a mobile adblocker and if it was only a mobile adblocker technically it is software and is software news.

Yes but only effects mobile adblockers it dont affect Windows O/S adblockers . Ublock Origin dont accept money at all . :lol:

[Holmes]

It doesnt matter what ublock does its not effective according to taker and Im sure adblockk plus isnt the only adblocker that does similiar shit.

[steven36]

It doesnt matter what ublock does its not effective according to faker and Im sure adblockk plus isnt the only adblocker that does similiar shit.

No there not the only ones that have acceptable ads ..Also AD Guard has them but they dont get paid by Eyeo they get paid by Google and yandex.

I dont care what Adblock + does it can get sued and drop off the face of the planet for all I care Id never miss it . :lol:

What it can do or dont do has nothing to do with them paying off there competition in the mobile market to not block ads that's called bribery were I'm from and against the law.

Also Google and Microsoft should be sued too for paying the sell outs! All the money they pay ABP they could make better ads ..

A lot people use Google Chrome and claim its the best browser too , But i dont use it . I'm my own person and I use what i want . I dont easily be swayed to do what the masses do.

[clubhouse]

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It doesnt matter what ublock does its not effective according to faker and Im sure adblockk plus isnt the only adblocker that does similiar shit.

No there not the only ones that have acceptable ads ..Also AD Guard has them but they dont get paid by Eyeo they get paid by Google and yandex.

I dont care what Adblock + does it can get sued and drop off the face of the planet for all I care Id never miss it . :lol:

What it can do or dont do has nothing to do with them paying off there competition in the mobile market to not block ads that's called bribery were I'm from and against the law.

Also Google and Microsoft should be sued too for paying the sell outs! All the money they pay ABP they could make better ads ..

A lot people use Google Chrome and claim its the best browser too , But i dont use it . I'm my own person and I use what i want . I dont easily be swayed to do what the masses do.

I dont care what Adblock + does it can get sued and drop off the face of the planet for all I care Id never miss it . :lol: THIS!

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[Holmes]

What adblocker do you use there are not many alternatives to adblock plus and honestly adblock plus is very good hell me and my brother trevor think its a godscend and there are alot of users who think the same shit. ALl the users that complain about adblock are users that dont know how to configure it.

[steven36]

What adblocker do you use there are not many alternatives to adblock plus and honestly adblock plus is very good hell me and my brother trevor think its a godscend and there are alot of users who think the same shit. ALl the users that complain about adblock are users that dont know how to configure it.

What does this have do with what they do as far as there acceptable ad policy and the fact there bribing there competition? Please stay on topic .I already know what it can do because I used it for years tell they sold out to the ad industry so I no longer use it and dont care what it does they have not changed nothing in years . ABP had about 28 million users at one time and they got most of it users before they became sell outs to the ad industry . There's 3 billion plus people on internet so people who use ad block is still a minatory .

Acceptable ads’ are not the solution, they lead to advertising that’s easy to ignore and therefore ineffective anyway. Publishers won’t benefit from them as they would from instream video ads.

Ad block’s business model relies on making publishers pay to be whitelisted (see chapter 3). Consequently, paying to be whitelisted amounts to give up to the ad blocker’s model.

•On top of that, companies behind ad blockers remain obscure and there are no real guarantee that a website will actually be whitelisted, since there is no way to measure it properly .

•Each ad blocker owns a certain market share and none of them reveals them, making it impossible for publishers neither to choose a relevant one nor to judge if prices are appropriate.

•Finally, ad blockers are so numerous that there are a lot of phishing companies hiding behind the name “ad block”.

Some websites; they would probably not have been exposed to such ads on premium websites, which do not want to deceit their audience. Yet, once ad block is installed, it blocks any ad on any website – most providers offer the possibility to manually add white-listed websites, yet it requires a whole procedure from the user’s part. Consequently, it is today hard to tell whether ad blocker users would overall approve high-quality ads on premium websites, since most of them do not realize the difference between them and low-quality ads.

Misunderstanding between ads and private data

Ad block users’ motivations seem to fall within the broad trend of fear of private data use. There is a confusion between being exposed to advertisement, seeing ads that are targeting users using historical data (which websites are visited, etc.), having private data collected for marketing purpose (name, address, age, etc.) and having private data collected for national security purpose.

It is true that ad blockers can prevent to some extent the gathering of private data. Yet, it is rather an edge effect than the original purpose and can be easily bypassed.

http://www.secretmedia.com/whitepaper/adblocker_whitepaper.php

There are startups all over the world working to break Ad block completely just like Secret Media . There's a war between publishers and ad block that most likey ad block will lose one day because its the filthy rich vs the not so rich . the more people who uses them the more they are going to counteract them :P

Already many sites dont work with default filters

Its just going get worse not better .

Google and Microsoft wasting a ton of cash paying ABP for something that dont really work . :rolleyes:

[dcs18]

The day I start using the impotent uBlock simply because the most effective Adblock Plus was accused of paying off other ad blockers like uBlock would make for a happy and lucrative day in the life of my Shrink. :tehe:

[dMog]

tried ublock once,,,it sucked so bad i removed it in less than 20 minutes of use,,,gotta go with dss18's thoughts on this....his above post

[dcs18]

tried ublock once,,,it sucked so bad i removed it in less than 20 minutes of use,,,gotta go with dss18's thoughts on this....his above post

Yep, I still keep trying uBlock out (once in a month) to test for latest enhancements, if any.

Unfortunately, as of writing this post — uBlock is not even amongst the top 3 (respects fly out to Adguard.)

[Holmes]

It doesnt matter what ublock does its not effective according to faker and Im sure adblockk plus isnt the only adblocker that does similiar shit.

:lol: taker not faker :uhuh:

it's my name for god sake :lmao:

OMFG accidental typo my mind said faker I know Im a poet and love to rhyme unfortunately my mind sometimes rhymes unintentionally and I dont catch it I know a tech and a poet who knew Im sorry taker. I went and editted my original post stupid mistake (that is funny). It says there accused of paying off doesnt say they did for your information.

[steven36]

tried ublock once,,,it sucked so bad i removed it in less than 20 minutes of use,,,gotta go with dss18's thoughts on this....his above post

Don't all you ABP lovers got some Peace talks to attend or something :lol:

AdBlock Plus Wants to Host Peace Talks Between Internet Users and Advertisers

Eyeo, the German parent company of Adblock Plus, plans to host a “roundtable discussion” within the next year where advertisers and everyday internet users can discuss what the next-generation of acceptable ads look like, Eyeo’s Ben Williams told Motherboard this morning. The conference does not have an exact date, but is something the company is already working with advertising industry stakeholders to develop.

“We really want to get people’s input as we move forward," Williams said, noting that British advertising group IAB UK has already expressed interest with getting involved in the process. “We have all sorts of ideas in mind with how we take the criteria [of acceptable ads] to the next level.”

When Motherboard suggested that this sounds an awful lot like the Yalta Conference, where the Allied Powers met in the closing months of World War II to plan the post-war world order, Williams conceded that Eyeo is informally comparing the planned event to the Camp David peace accords.

“#CampDavid is how we were thinking of putting it out there,” Williams said.

Potentially at stake is the fate of the commercial internet as we know it, and the countless number of free websites (including Motherboard) that depend upon advertising. (The online advertising industry’s total value reached $49.5 billion in revenue in the US in 2014.) Eyeo’s products—its first, Adblock Plus, was released for Firefox in 2006—block these ads, in part because these ads are frequently intrusive and potentially dangerous. The key now is to figure out what kinds of ads will pay these websites’ bills while not creating a poor user experience.

“We can’t solve the entire ad mess in one fell swoop,” Williams said. “We’re going to need a lot of people to get on board with the idea of non-intrusive ads in order for it to take off.”

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/adblock-plus-wants-to-host-peace-talks-between-internet-users-and-advertisers

Willams is more worried about ways to get you to take there acceptable ads than improving his software so Google and Microsoft keep making him lots of money .. :P

ABP 's motto only block ads that dont make Eyeo money :yes:

Are you so insecure about the product you use that the only defense you have is ublock? So lets go all off topic and talk about someone else's software because we dont like what is said about ABP? . :lol: Something that has nothing to do with ABP and its mafia tactics . Its not ublock that keeps making the news for making money off the ad industry its ABP in fact ublock dont accept money at all.

Fact is most Nsaners disagree with your opinion about ublock because almost every version posted here has made a popular post since released for Firefox . The user ratting speak for themselves .

[Batu69]

Fact is most Nsaners disagree with your opinion about ublock because almost every version posted here has made a popular post since released for Firefox . The user ratting speak for themselves .

:showoff: :rockon: :thumbsup:

[software182]

:snack:

[dcs18]

Adblock Plus (ADP) rules crafted specially for Softexia — Adblock Plus since uBlock does not have the capability to create advanced rules of this level.

Needless to state that executing a batu (copy-paste) of those rules work for haters of Adblock Plus, as well. :rasta: