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You are here: Home / Google / AdBlock Plus Selling Ads to Display in Place of Blocked Ads

AdBlock Plus Selling Ads to Display in Place of Blocked Ads

September 14, 2016 at 4:56 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

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adblock-plus-ad-network-adsAdBlock Plus, the most popular tool to block ads on websites, is now selling their own ads through a partnership with ComboTag .

AdBlock Plus has launched the Acceptable Ads Platform, a new ad network that replaces the blocked ads on a website – ads that would normally disappear on a site for a user running AdBlock Plus – own ads instead.

This puts AdBlock Plus in an interesting position.  They are blocking publishers from earning revenue from the ads they place on their websites when an AdBlock Plus user visits the site… and now they want publishers to then sign up with the same company to run AdBlock Plus’ new Acceptable Ads Platform which AdBlock Plus financially benefits from.

Of course, the new Acceptable Ads Platform is not the only revenue stream for AdBlock Plus.  Some companies pay AdBlock Plus for their ads to be whitelisted in the program… including Google, Bing/Microsoft and Taboola.  And the revenue from this whitelisting is believed to be very significant.  The list of exceptions can be found here, and includes some rather interesting sites.  For example, while AdSense isn’t whitelisted by default, some publisher sites have AdSense on their own sites whitelisted.

On the positive side, AdBlock Plus does not seem to be replacing ads on sites where the publisher hasn’t signed up for their program.   But if advertiser demand is high enough, there is always the possibility they could begin showing those ads to users in the future.

Pierre Far from Blockmetry is concerned about how the ad serving will work and “whether they’re guaranteeing their ad placements will not be blocked. If they’re blockable, what they’re producing is no different than any other ad tag. If they’re not blockable, there could be a serious backlash.”

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.  They also say that only 8-10% of users actually disable this option in the settings.

adblock-plus-settings

According to their FAQ, they claim that users will not see more ads, although if they are replacing non-served ads with their own, it is clearly going to mean the end user sees more ads.  From the FAQ:

adblock-plus-more-ads

AdBlock Plus does anticipate some users will remove the software from their browsers due to the change.  According to this imgur image, they have added “I don’t like the Acceptable Ads program” as one of the options when asked why it is being removed.

ad-block-plus-remove

It will be interesting to see how the user base reacts to this change and whether many uninstall AdBlock Plus in favor of one of their competitors.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
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Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

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