Adblock Plus comes (somewhat) clean about how Acceptable Ads work

[Batu69]

The Acceptable Ads program from Adblock Plus has proved slightly controversial. The company behind the ad blocking tool, Eyeo, has already revealed a little about how it makes money from the program -- despite the fact that no money changes hands in most whitelisting cases -- and today it has opened up further about how it makes its money.

 

Whilst recognizing that people do want to block ads, Eyeo is also aware that sites do need to benefit from ad revenue -- hence Acceptable Ads, non-intrusive ads that it is hoped are less irritating and therefore easier to stomach. But Eyeo itself also wants to make money. How does it decide which company to charge for Acceptable Ads whitelisting, and what to charge? If you're expecting full transparency, you might be disappointed, but we are given a glimpse into how the financial side of things works.

 

In a blog post, Adblock Plus' Ben Williams concedes that while people in the ad blocking business are fully aware of how acceptable ads works, "we understand that it might be murky to you". He is quick to stress that most of the companies whose ads are whitelisted do not 'compensate' Adblock Plus ('pay' is such a dirty word, isn't it?). He goes on to offer a rule of thumb for deciding whether to charge or not:

 

Quote

[...] only advertisers that stand to gain more than 10 million incremental ad impressions per month because of whitelisting are asked to sponsor. To put that in perspective, if 5 percent of a site's users block ads, for example, then that site needs to have 200 million ad impressions to begin with in order to break the 10 million threshold.

A site's non-ad block traffic is not included in the calculation. Using this definition, most publishers don’t pay anything at all -- in our last measurement, 90 percent were free actually.

 

In many ways this is a story we've heard before. There are a few new snippets of information, sure, but there's hardly full transparency; it's far too easy to hide behind phrases like 'we cannot provide details about specific contracts or partners'). The blog post itself is an exercise in making things awkward. Rather than simply presenting the information people are likely to be interested in, in an easy to read format. We are instead treated to a short blog post littered with links to other pages on the Adblock Plus site, forums pages, and so on.

 

It doesn’t matter whether you click through every single link provided, you find that you're still left scrabbling for what you want to know. Fancy working through more than 600 forum threads to properly determine how Acceptable Ads works? No. Thought not.

 

The post goes on to explain -- a little -- how a chargeable fee is calculated. Adblock Plus also tries to put forward the idea that charging for whitelisting is nothing to do with generating profits. Taken at face value, you'd be forgiven for thinking every cent earned is ploughed back in to the company:

 

Quote

For those not admitted for free, we calculate the licensing fee as a percentage of the extra revenue the advertiser earns after whitelisting. It is not based on total ad revenue, but rather the value our service creates.

This revenue allows us to hire employees to do the hard work providing that service demands. Software engineers have to maintain the whitelist, monitor it and provide customer service to each whitelisted site, whether payment is involved or not. Acceptable Ads also provides value to publishers that was previously unavailable -- and not only value, but sustainable value created with the user rather than at his/her expense.

 

All clear? No? Good.

But it's OK, because Ben says:

 

Quote

Finally, this blog post will not answer every question. Trouble is, we can't, because NDAs and contracts.

 

So there you go. Just don't ask about integrity...

 

Article source

[steven36]

That's still like being the Ad Mafia so we take from the rich and not block ads of  the poor . The point is any site that's being sponsored by Goggle ad sense and others has ads they dont block.  And there letting others be on the whitelist for  free so leaving that little box checked is going to show way too many ads . And really they could care less if you check the box or not and they have to put on a show like they do so big money will pay them . But they get piad regardless . If they was to take the ability away to uncheck that box they would lose most there users ..So they have that box so they can get paid they dont fool me a bit. 

[mikie]

If the little AdGuard program came out with a free model it could probably take away a huge chunk of the AdBlock  white listing business very quickly.  Sooner or later a Google or Microsoft will want to be in control of that business.  So some big bucks to be handed out there someday to the winner.

[Clusterphuck]

2 hours ago, mikie said:

If the little AdGuard program came out with a free model it could probably take away a huge chunk of the AdBlock  white listing business very quickly.

 

They already have free browser extensions for every popular browser minus Internet Explorer which is considered the 'free model'.

[mikie]

1 hour ago, Clusterphuck said:

 

They already have free browser extensions for every popular browser minus Internet Explorer which is considered the 'free model'.

 

I know my eye sight is not the best, but could you show me where AdGuard has free browser extensions ?

[The Seeker]

I'll simply carry on using uBlock Origin.

[steven36]

12 hours ago, mikie said:

If the little AdGuard program came out with a free model it could probably take away a huge chunk of the AdBlock  white listing business very quickly.  Sooner or later a Google or Microsoft will want to be in control of that business.  So some big bucks to be handed out there someday to the winner.

Never will it be as popular

1.  Its  paid model it has got a big following  thanks to  Microsoft Browsers  never getting extensions yet.

2. Its like ABP  it has a acceptable ads box  in its paid software and free extensions so  not only do they charge you for there best version they get paid to allow ads too.

3. I know people who bought it that  switch to uBlock Origin because of bugs

4. When people go to AMO  at Firefox they see ABP  as the number #1  add-on  there..  so people do whats popular and many have used it so long they dont want switch to anything else.

 

[luisam]

I don't know how good business might be for Adbock Plus this "acceptable ads" scheme but since I installed it, removed or blocked drasticlally all those moronic pop unders trying to lure me to pished Flash Player pages, showing me how to earn 5000 USD a day just sitting by my computer 4 hours, warning me that my computer is infected, etc... Up to now, only had some issues with a yahoo page but solved it defining an exception.

[Clusterphuck]

On 2/26/2016 at 0:20 AM, mikie said:

 

I know my eye sight is not the best, but could you show me where AdGuard has free browser extensions ?

 

They're free and open source browser extensions.

 

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adguard-adblocker/

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker/bgnkhhnnamicmpeenaelnjfhikgbkllg

Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/adguard/

Safari: https://safari-extensions.apple.com/details/?id=com.adguard.safari-N33TQXN8C7

 

They also have a legacy XPI for Pale Moon on their Github releases page: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardBrowserExtension/releases

[Pequi]

I've used Adblock-plus for ages with all lists disabled and deleted and with non-intrusive advertizing dissallowed.

It will, however, try to phone home to download whitelists, even if you opt-out, so add this to your hosts file:

 

127.0.0.1 notification.adblockplus.org

 

What is it for, without lists  ?

Well, you can easily add your own rules under "Custom Filters" and it blocks Flash and popups by default.

Which is all I need.

[steven36]

3 hours ago, Clusterphuck said:

 

They're free and open source browser extensions.

 

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adguard-adblocker/

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker/bgnkhhnnamicmpeenaelnjfhikgbkllg

Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/adguard/

Safari: https://safari-extensions.apple.com/details/?id=com.adguard.safari-N33TQXN8C7

 

They also have a legacy XPI for Pale Moon on their Github releases page: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardBrowserExtension/releases

There not open source

Quote

 

Privacy Policy

The full privacy policy is available at http://adguard.com/en/privacy.html.

Please read our privacy policy to learn what kind of information we collect via Adguard and how we store and use it afterwards.

General notes

In general, we collect no more personal information than is required in order to provide full functionality of our products. It is never shared with any third parties. This policy lists the data that is collected and the processing applied to it. We take all necessary technical, administrative and physical measures to protect the information we collect about users.

Information we collect when you use Adguard browser extensions

Adguard extension installation or update.

Adguard extension connects to its server just after installation or update. When it happens, the following information is sent:

1. Unique extension ID.
2. Extension version.
3. Browser language.
4. «Show acceptable ads» setting value.

We do this with a single purpose: to know the number of unique installations of our extension. This information is stored for 24 hours and then it is deleted.

Also Adguard makes a request to our server in order to get user's country code. The purpose of this is to enable proper language-specific filter.

Ad Blocker filters updates check

Adguard extension connects to its servers to check ad blocker filters updates. When it happens, the following information is sent:

1. Ad blocker filters identifiers.
2. Current ad blocker filters versions.
3. Browser extension type.
4. Extension version.

Browsing Security site check

If you enable «Phishing and malware protection» option, Adguard extension checks every web site before you visit it. It uses a special lookup web service to do the check. When it happens, the following information is sent:

1. Website domain name.
2. Website IP address.
3. Statistics for ad filters usage

If you enable the «Send statistics for ad filters usage» option, the following information is sent periodically:

1. Extension version.
2. Browser type (Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Yandex.Browser/Safari).
3. List of enabled ad filters.
4. The list that consists of the following elements:
4.1. The domain name of the website,
4.2. The number of recent page views,
4.3. The list of filtering rules and Filter ID which were activated on this website,
4.4. The domain name of blocked requests is sent for URL rules

The list is created based on the website's visit statistics since the last time statistical data was sent.

By gathering statistics on used filtering rules, we can detect and remove the rules that are no longer used. As a result, it will help all those who use Adguard.

Browsing Security community

If you enabled the «Help us in Browsing security filters development», the program will periodically send anonymous security-related data:

1. URLs of visited websites that Adguard identifies as potentially untrustworthy.
2. Information on the nature of identified threats.
3. Browser language.

Complaint on some web page

When you send a complaint on some web page, the following information is sent:

1. Web page address.
2. Selected complaint type.
3. User's comment.

Why do we need it?

The information described above, when collected by the Adguard extension, is generally not correlated with any other personal information related to you and is used anonymously in aggregation with similar information from other users of the Adguard software for analytical purposes.

urce

 

 

53 minutes ago, Pequi said:

I've used Adblock-plus for ages with all lists disabled and deleted and with non-intrusive advertizing dissallowed.

It will, however, try to phone home to download whitelists, even if you opt-out, so add this to your hosts file:

 

127.0.0.1 notification.adblockplus.org

 

What is it for, without lists  ?

Well, you can easily add your own rules under "Custom Filters" and it blocks Flash and popups by default.

Which is all I need.

No one much wants too fool with fine tuning adblockers that's OK for people who spends most of there time tweaking and fine tuning  there pcs but and ad blocker should work out the box not be haveing  you invent you're  own list . Only time you should have make a rule should just be cosmetic .

[Clusterphuck]

7 hours ago, steven36 said:

There not open source

 

Uhh, Adguard's browser extensions are open source. The source code is available on Github: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardBrowserExtension

 

I'm literally looking at the code right now.

[steven36]

3 minutes ago, Clusterphuck said:

 

Uhh, Adguard's browser extensions are open source. The source code is available on Github: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardBrowserExtension

 

I'm literally looking at the code right now.

They use GNU Lesser General Public License witch pretty much lets them add what ever they want.
 

Quote

The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate software released under the LGPL into their own (even proprietary) software without being required by the terms of a strong copyleft license to release the source code of their own components. The license only requires software under the LGPL be modifiable by end users via source code availability. For proprietary software, code under the LGPL is usually used in the form of a shared library such as a DLL, so that there is a clear separation between the proprietary and LGPL components. The LGPL is primarily used for software libraries, although it is also used by some stand-alone applications.

The LGPL was developed as a compromise between the strong copyleft of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and more permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License. The word "Lesser" in the title shows that the LGPL does not guarantee the end user's complete freedom in the use of software; it only guarantees the freedom of modification for components licensed under the LGPL, but not for any proprietary components.

 

 

uBlock Origin  is really Open Source it  uses GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
 

Quote

 

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In other words, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition^[7] and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved whenever the work is distributed, even when the work is changed or added to. The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derived works can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are the standard examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use.

Prominent free software programs licensed under the GPL include the Linux kernel and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). Some other free software programs (MySQL is a prominent example) are dual-licensed under multiple licenses, often with one of the licenses being the GPL.

Historically, the GPL license family has been one of the most popular software licenses in the FOSS domain.^{[6][8][9][10][11][12][13]}David A. Wheeler argues that the copyleft provided by the GPL was crucial to the success of Linux-based systems, giving the programmers who contributed to the kernel the assurance that their work would benefit the whole world and remain free, rather than being exploited by software companies that would not have to give anything back to the community.^[14]

On 29 June 2007, the third version of the license (GNU GPLv3) was released to address some perceived problems with the second version (GNU GPLv2) that were discovered during its long-time usage. To keep the license up-to-date, the GPL license includes an optional "any later version" clause, allowing users to choose between the original terms or the terms in new versions as updated by the FSF. Developers can omit it when licensing their software; for instance the Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2 without the "any later version" clause.^[15][16]