Showing posts with label Adblock Plus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adblock Plus. Show all posts
The Internet is old enough to fit like a comfy shoe, and have it's own tired clichés, like:
[caption id="attachment_6453" align="alignright" width="150"]
An example of the T&A in TPB's ads.[/caption]
This, apparently three year old saying, is meant to refer to the free Internet services we all use, and how they make their money mining our personal data. Many people now see it as glibness masquerading as wisdom, a truism, verging on a platitude, but it continues to be true, all the same.
I use the open-source Adblock Plus Add-on for Firefox, along with, according to Wikipedia. about 16 million other Firefox users (ABP claims 30 million users). Sure it speeds up page loading, but I kind blame it's popularity on The Pirate Bay. Let's say I need to download, um, a Linux ISO file -- ya. right -- certainly nothing illegal. Anyway. I need to download this file in a public library, or a coffee shop. Have you seen the ads on TPB? I for one don't want to expose small, impressionable, children, and Presbyterians, to that sort of thing, so I use Adblock Plus, or that's how I thought it worked, except I never thought about it.
Turns out, the makers of ABP are using me. This eye-opening online Guardian item details how Eyeo, the German company behind Adblock Plus, is leveraging their large user base to literally extort money out of online services who rely on ad views for some or all of their revenue, that includes Google, which The Guardian say gets 90% of its revenue from showing ads, along with, basically, all social media, such as Facebook, and Twitter.
Eyeo actively approaches Internet companies with an offer to "partner" with them, in order to "engineer acceptable, non-intrusive advertising," to quote ABP's own "open letter blogpost to Twitter.
In a nutshell Eyeo's Adblock Plus is designed to block, or blacklist, all ads on Web sites that are not listed in the program's internal whitelist. Companies can get on that whitelist by adhering to Eyeo's Acceptable Ads guidelines, and... by handing over a share of their advertising revenues.
Eyeo apparently lets small companies off the hook, but, according to the Guardian item, for those Internet companies which pay -- including Google, Amazon and Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine -- the fee is 30% of the revenue generated by showing ads.
It sure sounds like a shakedown tactic, but, the other side of this issue is that Internet ads, unlike ads in mainstream media, are generally so deplorably "lowest common denoiminator," that no one want to see them. Adblock Plus' developers argue that they're using their power to create responsible advertising, that won't embarrass people browsing the Web in, say, a public library.
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
[caption id="attachment_6453" align="alignright" width="150"]
An example of the T&A in TPB's ads.[/caption]This, apparently three year old saying, is meant to refer to the free Internet services we all use, and how they make their money mining our personal data. Many people now see it as glibness masquerading as wisdom, a truism, verging on a platitude, but it continues to be true, all the same.
I use the open-source Adblock Plus Add-on for Firefox, along with, according to Wikipedia. about 16 million other Firefox users (ABP claims 30 million users). Sure it speeds up page loading, but I kind blame it's popularity on The Pirate Bay. Let's say I need to download, um, a Linux ISO file -- ya. right -- certainly nothing illegal. Anyway. I need to download this file in a public library, or a coffee shop. Have you seen the ads on TPB? I for one don't want to expose small, impressionable, children, and Presbyterians, to that sort of thing, so I use Adblock Plus, or that's how I thought it worked, except I never thought about it.
Turns out, the makers of ABP are using me. This eye-opening online Guardian item details how Eyeo, the German company behind Adblock Plus, is leveraging their large user base to literally extort money out of online services who rely on ad views for some or all of their revenue, that includes Google, which The Guardian say gets 90% of its revenue from showing ads, along with, basically, all social media, such as Facebook, and Twitter.
When business models collide
Eyeo actively approaches Internet companies with an offer to "partner" with them, in order to "engineer acceptable, non-intrusive advertising," to quote ABP's own "open letter blogpost to Twitter.
In a nutshell Eyeo's Adblock Plus is designed to block, or blacklist, all ads on Web sites that are not listed in the program's internal whitelist. Companies can get on that whitelist by adhering to Eyeo's Acceptable Ads guidelines, and... by handing over a share of their advertising revenues.
Eyeo apparently lets small companies off the hook, but, according to the Guardian item, for those Internet companies which pay -- including Google, Amazon and Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine -- the fee is 30% of the revenue generated by showing ads.
It sure sounds like a shakedown tactic, but, the other side of this issue is that Internet ads, unlike ads in mainstream media, are generally so deplorably "lowest common denoiminator," that no one want to see them. Adblock Plus' developers argue that they're using their power to create responsible advertising, that won't embarrass people browsing the Web in, say, a public library.
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