HOW TO WHITELIST A WEBSITE ON ADBLOCK PLUS PLUS
Ohanian expressed some reservation about the Acceptable Ads initiative, admitting that it sounds a bit like filtering the Internet – a topic he recently spent a keynote addressing during Social Media Week in New York.Īs fate would have it, Reddit was recently added to the Adblock Plus “whitelist” – a significant move for the ad blocker, given the fact that Reddit’s audience is largely tech-aware users who appear to buy into what the Acceptable Ads initiative is all about. When told of our source’s accusations of Adblocker Plus’ pricing tactics, Ohanian said he hadn’t heard of any such behavior but that, “It would make me a sad panda,” if it were true. I like that exists because it puts an onus on publishers to be a little bit more tasteful with the ads that they run, but also to think about alternative business models … especially at a time when publishers are having a hard time keeping the lights on.” “If you think about it, everything about the Internet has been evolving – except for ads,” Ohanian says.
“There is not a fixed pricing system.” He stressed that no one can just pay to be whitelisted.Īdblocker Plus has some high profile advocates, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. “We will work out on a case-by-base basis how can contribute to our project,” he says. If larger sites apply or are submitted, Adblock Plus will figure out away to allow them to “contribute.” As you can imagine, this is a very ambitious goal and a work in progress.”Īdblock Plus refers to companies participating in Acceptable Ads as “whitelisted,” and Faida says that publishers can apply for the whitelist or be submitted by the community, and that it’s intended to help smaller websites, not large ones. “We are trying to incorporate feedback from our users, but also websites, ad agencies, and advertisers to create rules for a compromise that works for everyone. “So far only a few websites have been included and we have not yet worked out all details and criteria,” co-founder Till Faida tells us, while also mentioning the program is still in a beta phase. The company also believes it can help improve Web advertising overall. There are more than a few websites that would lose their ability to operate if ads were blocked entirely, and Adblock Plus’ position as the most-used ad blocking application out there puts it in the position of gatekeeper. To illustrate how aggressive Adblock Plus is being in its pursuit of this revenue stream, the source claims that the company initially demanded a flat fee, paid in advance quarterly, in exchange for the media company’s ads being displayed.Īdblock Plus maintains that the Acceptable Ads initiative is well intentioned. “They’re basically charging us for our own content.” “Their pitch is that you’ll increase your revenue with little to no monetary investment,” our source says. Put another way, Adblock Plus allegedly will allow its definition of acceptable advertising to be determined by a dollar amount. “They’re basically charging us for our own content.”Now, according to a source who works for a major online publisher (and would only speak on the condition of anonymity), Adblock Plus approached the company and offered to push ads through the extension’s filters in exchange for a third of the profits generated by the advertising. What that meant was they were pivoting from a company that provided tools to block annoying ads and toward a company that would become an arbiter of what was – and was not – acceptable advertising. When it launched its Acceptable Ads initiative in December of 2011, users were outraged that Adblock Plus would begin selectively pushing ads through its own filters, and eyebrows were raised when it was learned that the new feature would be “opt out,” requiring people to dig into their settings to disable it and return to the ad-free environment they downloaded Adblocker Plus for in the first place.Ĭompany president Wladimir Palant claimed that the initiative was in line with Adblocker Plus’ core function: to improve the overall Web experience.
HOW TO WHITELIST A WEBSITE ON ADBLOCK PLUS SOFTWARE
But, a little over two years ago, the company behind the software did something that seemed to make no sense: they began showing ads.Īdblock Plus’ open source, community-driven policies earned it a loyal and vocal user base. As the Internet became overrun with auto-play videos, overflowing page margins, and impossible-to-close pop-ups, Adblock Plus was viewed as a godsend by millions – more than 200 million of them at last count. In 2006, Adblock Plus 0.6 was released as a browser extension that promised to keep users’ Web experience uncluttered and advertising-free.