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AdBlock Plus users boast with the fact that they can browse websites and watch videos without having to glare at and skip annoying ads. While the main features within AdBlock Plus are not going to change anytime soon, we have now learned that people will still get ads from Google, Amazon and Microsoft. If you’re thinking it’s not fair, you might be right. Alas, it seems the three companies have come forward to AdBlock Plus and asked the service to continue displaying their ads, even when enabled on all websites, in exchange for a fee.
Fee? No, not for AdBlock Plus users, naturally, but for Google, Amazon, Taboola and Microsoft. It looks like AdBlock Plus isn’t set on pleasing their users too much, as the Financial Times found out that all of the above companies have been paying the service to display their ads. That might set a dangerous trend and users will surely condemn AdBlock Plus for double-crossing them, so to speak.
To be clear, you still see ads with AdBlock Plus enabled, as long as they fit criteria set by the service: transparent, not misleading and not obnoxious. Websites get revenues from the ads they have on their websites, so it’s pretty natural that many companies have started pointing fingers at AdBlock Plus for interfering with that. From what we understood, the company behind AdBlock Plus, Eyeo, gets about 30 % of the ad revenues from the websites it whitelists. That’s not a small share, especially when it comes to multinationals like Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
The situation with ads and revenues has been intensifying in the past few months as many companies from America and Europe are targeting AdBlock Plus and making it appear like the evil service nobody should use. Alas, there is some truth behind the pointed fingers, but AdBlock Plus will have no other choice than to comply if it wants to keep its service free and running. A solution would be that AdBlock Plus subscribers pay for the service in exchange for no ads, out of which a percentage would go out to those whose ads are not being displayed, but we’ve a feeling that might not sit well with users. We shall see how this evolves. At least we now know that we can’t be protected from ads completely.
