Why people who call ad blockers extortionists have got it wrong
Eyeo, the company that owns Adblock Plus, has actually been charging companies for a placement on its "Acceptable Ads" list - which means the ads abide by a policy that stipulates they must not be intrusive to the user experience, amongst other rules - for a while.
The company won't confirm how much it charges customers as it has individual, confidential contracts with each of the 70 or so companies it accepts payment from. Earlier this year, The Financial Times reported companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon were paying Eyeo a fee of "30% of the additional ad revenues" they would have made were their ads unblocked.
For years, Adblock Plus' business model has been compared to everything from "blackmail" to "extortion" to being a "Mafia-like advertising network."
On one hand, you can see why the publisher and advertising community might be annoyed. Eyeo has essentially erected toll booths on the internet, and the only way to prevent Adblock Plus from siphoning off revenue (by blocking ads from being served to Adblock Plus users) is to pay at the gate.
But many people fail to look at what Adblock Plus is doing from the polar opposite view. And if they did, maybe they might see it's not as much of a gangster outfit as people are making it out to be.
The view of an Adblock Plus customer
A top executive at a company that helps publishers make money from ads, which pays a "significant" amount to Adblock Plus each year told Business Insider it is "happy" with the partnership.
Ultimately, he thinks the benefits outweigh the costs
"Our customers asked us over the years: 'what can we do to to help monetize blocked traffic?' So when we were approved as part of Adblock Plus' Acceptable Ads agreement, we felt fortunate that we were adding a service. If we can provide incremental revenue because some of our customers' ads were being blocked, then believed we were doing what we're supposed to be doing. We're providing value to the publishers [by adding revenue] and the users [by serving them 'acceptable' rather than annoying ads.] You pay because the alternative is zero [of your ads being served,]," said the executive, who asked for neither him nor his company to be named.
We also asked whether he sympathized with those people who accuse Adblock Plus of extortion because it's charging companies to remove something that wouldn't even be a problem if Adblock Plus didn't exist.
He thinks those people need to look beyond blocking and realize what Adblock Plus has done to actually benefit (yes, benefit!) the advertising sector: "We think that Adblock Plus helped spark a conversation about what is a good ad experience, between pop-ups, privacy, tracking, and more - which is a good thing."
The Adblock Plus view
Disruption is always going to irritate those being disrupted
Shaul Omert, CEO and founder of viral content publishing platform PlayBuzz, told Business Insider: "If you want to disrupt, you're going to have to shake things up. Advertisers are not going to say: 'Let's not convince people to buy things so much, let's encourage them to spend more time with their families!' The only way to tell people they have gone overboard is to shake things up."
But Omert says the case of Adblock Plus is slightly nuanced due to the way it ultimately operates the Acceptable Ads list, even though it does receive input from its community.
He added: "At the same time, if you try to force, impose, and play judge and juror, that's not going to fly, because nobody asked them to."
Adblock Plus' business model won't sit easily with everyone, but it's worth considering that it has at least added some value - by way of opening up conversations about improving advertising on the web - to make up for some of the reported billions dollars it blocks in unserved ads, or the money it takes in fees.