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The Verge reports via a German paper that Google has reportedly paid Eyeo, the makers of Adblock Plus to whitelist their ads.
That means, Google has supposedly paid to make sure their ads are not blocked by this adblock tool. I should note, Adblock is the most popular browser extension on Chrome and Firefox for blocking ads.
The FAQs does now say that some companies do pay for help in managing the whitelist. It reads:
Whitelisting is free for all small websites and blogs. However, managing this list requires significant effort on our side and this task cannot be completely taken over by volunteers as it happens with common filter lists. That's why we are being paid by some larger properties that serve nonintrusive advertisements that want to participate in the Acceptable Ads initiative.
As you can imagine, advertisers and publishers are okay with this but some consumers are not.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Praveen Sharma
07/08/2013 01:02 pm
Is it a BRIBE from Google?
Mike
07/08/2013 01:19 pm
Isn't this the same as a PAID link? How hypocritical!!!
Andy
07/08/2013 03:31 pm
Google ads don't bother me since they load quickly and don't stall the page, it's all the other ads that drive me to use ad block.
MrAndrewJ
07/08/2013 05:11 pm
It's not the same as a paid link. Paid links exist to pass pagerank/link juice/SEO magic back to whoever bought the links. Whitelisted ads exist to advertise.
Ash
07/09/2013 04:20 am
You can still block google ads on adblock by using a custom filer like this ||google.com/pagead/
Kurt
07/10/2013 04:46 am
I don't think that's what Mike meant. I think he's referring to the spirit of the transaction. Google is trying to manipulate the visibility of its ads and circumventing Adblock's functionality by dumping money into the problem; just like paid link wherein webmasters are manipulating the visibility of their websites and circumventing Google's algorithm by dumping money into the problem. It's Adblock and Google's respective prerogative, for sure, but it's really hypocritical when Google uses money to manipulate how something works when it is fully against that type of behavior. As for the Acceptable Ads initiative, it should be a per-user experience, not a blanket experience. It should block every ad and just let each user whitelist the ads that they want shown on their own. Maybe put a note on the blocked ad and a button to whitelist on the side.
MrAndrewJ
07/10/2013 05:12 am
He asked about paid links versus paid whitelisting. To be truthful, I think this is a sleazy move on behalf of Adblock Plus and Google. I hope very much that users can still set their own whitelists contrary to what Google is buying. But, the paid whitelisting is not the same as a paid link.
newyorker_1
07/10/2013 06:14 am
Google is the king of double standards...
Alex Ross
09/29/2013 07:22 pm
bullshit, i've been using adblock for months'n havent seen a single google ad!