![]() ![]() (Williams dubs these counter tech startups “competing solutions”.) There’s also advertising encryption startups like Secret Media, using more tech to smuggle ad content past ad blockers. The rise of adblocking has also, most recently, been driving the creation of anti-adblocking startups, such as PageFair and Sourcepoint, which aim to detect/track use of adblocking, and then serve users with messages encouraging them not to use adblocking. It’s just a matter of people discovering it.” I think there’s a lot of room for growth out there. Including Australia… In Brazil we have 0.5 per cent of the online population. “I see a lot of growth potential in the Anglophone world. But he sees that as scope for lots more growth. remains low - around 4 per cent, according to Williams (vs around 10 per cent in Poland). “There’s a lot of potential reasons why the growth has picked up, but it definitely has.”ĭespite this uptick in desktop use (the vast majority of ABP users are using either Chrome or Firefox on the desktop), the rate of Adblock Plus usage in countries such as the U.S. “Chrome is the browser now in most places,” he notes. So there’s a lot of factors.”Īnother factor Williams suspects helped ABP’s growth is adding its extension to Chrome, having initially only been available for Firefox. It’s hard to get the word out there other than just getting a lot of press coverage - and that also has picked up around 2013. And clearly, as a company called Adblock Plus, we can’t really do much marketing. “I’m not really sure what happened in 2013 but the download rate really started to increase around that time,” says Williams. “What we found is most people hear about it from friends. So it’s really hard to predict when growth is going to happen. And it’s built up this user base without doing any traditional advertising itself, of course. Adblock Plus is just one ad blocker among scores offered as desktop browser extensions, and says it has around 50M to 60M active users per month at this point (averaging 2.3 million downloads per week since 2013 - and staying “at a steady clip” ever since, as Williams puts it). EasyList and EasyPrivacy), and allowing users to choose which lists they want to use (or make their own) - depending on the types of content they want to block.Ĭonsumers’ growing appetite for content-blocking tools is in no doubt. ![]() It does not maintain blocking/filter lists itself - relying on third party, independent filter lists (e.g. Most, some 90 per cent, of these whitelisted entities don’t pay, according to ABP’s head of ops, Ben Williams - as he says it only charges “large” entities, and the amount it charges is decided “case by case”. It’s a model that has drawn criticism of extortion from ad-funded publishers and ad companies, although ABP claims whitelisted entities see an uplift in ad revenue because consumers prefer the less annoying, contextually relevant ads they are served. Google is among Adblock Plus’ paying customers. So ‘ad’ blocking is just the tip, although the most vocal critics of ABP et al tend to be ad-funded publishers. (ABP users can still opt out of these whitelisted ads if they want, although it says most users choose not to do so - it’s “low single digits” who turn them off.) Content ABP can block includes pop-up ads, flashing banners, distracting graphics, ad tracking tech, auto playing video ads injected into articles, malware domains, and - even - the ‘seen’ message on Facebook (should you wish to kill read receipts). ![]() Adblock Plus has built a business out of helping web users avoid overly annoying ads and other unwanted digital content on the desktop by taking money from companies willing to conform to its “acceptable ads” manifesto in order to be whitelisted and have their marketing let through the gate. ![]()
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