Google is the online advertising king, getting most of its money from internet ads. It seems odd to hear about the Search Giant ever having to ask favors from others when it comes to advertising, but there is one company they might have to work things out with from time to time – Adblock Plus.
The popular ad-blocker has started to affect Google’s income, as it allows users to stop seeing many ads online. Companies that can afford it can have their ads added to Adblock’s whitelist, though.
You guessed it, Google is said to be on the whitelist. Ideally, these would have to be non-intrusive and the fee is probably not very low. And even these “non-intrusive”, whitelisted ads can be turned off in the extension settings. So it is still not guaranteed that users will see your ads after you have paid to be whitelisted.
This makes Adblock Plus a very interesting company. Fighting ads, yet making a revenue out of them. Adblock also helps smaller companies by allowing them to be whitelisted without a fee, using the bigger companies’ money to maintain the maintenance costs.
The company certainly has power and seems to be orchestrating how ads will be seen online, at least to a large extent. If its big enough to get Google’s money, it’s definitely a huge deal.
Personally, I don’t use Adblock Plus. Working online, I know how important ads are in terms of internet economics. Most of your favorite bloggers, YouTubers and websites get all of their income from ads. In an indirect way, ads are the reason why they can make such content.
Now I know ads can be a pain, and they sometimes get out of hand. This is why I am also not against those who choose to use services like Adblock Plus. I just would rather support my favorite content providers (while being annoyed from time to time) than not help anyone at all.
