In a way,Indonesia it was only a matter of time.
AdBlock Plus, one of the world's most popular ad blocking services, announced Tuesday that it would begin selling ads, in apparent contradiction to its stated mission of blocking them.
SEE ALSO: Why did Facebook pick a losing fight with ad blockers?Publishers can now purchase pre-whitelisted ads through the service's new exchange software, currently in a beta stage.
The ads are billed as leaner, cleaner and less intrusive than the ones that AdBlock Plus users are presumably trying to shut out, and they will be shown in place of a site's normal ads.
AdBlock Plus owner Eyeo has been moving towards this type of business model for a while now with the expansion of its "acceptable ads program" that whitelists certain sites it judges to have user-friendly ads -- sometimes for a fee.
The list is also contracted out to various other mobile ad blocking apps and desktop services, which get a kickback from Eyeo in exchange for allowing the ads.
But consumer advocates and privacy experts have also criticized the program for a lack of transparent standards. Eyeo had previously promised to launch a nonprofit, independent board as an arbiter of which sites make the cut, but such plans have yet to materialize.
AdBlock Plus' new ad marketplace speaks even more clearly to the contradiction at the heart of every ad blocker's business model -- they're marketed to users as a free service to block ads, but they can't make money without showing said users ads. In that respect, ad blockers have never been much different than the ad networks they claim to despise.
It was only a matter of time before an ad blocker came full circle to an ad exchange -- though it's still a somewhat brazen move to say so in such an explicit manner.
AdBlock Plus is, of course, a longtime tormenter of the advertising and media industries, which see ad blocking in general as an existential threat. The online ad industry's biggest trade group, the Internet Advertising Bureau, has equated its business model to an extortion racket.
AdBlock Plus' turn as an advertising seller does not seem to be quelling these tensions much. The general sentiment among publishers seems to view the new program as something akin to a hostage situation.
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For its part, Eyeo thinks publishers should be happy with the new exchange because it gives them an opportunity to buy ads for disaffected readers who previously made no money for the websites.
“There are two ecosystems of online consumers out there right now: the one composed of people who block intrusive ads and the other where people do not," AdBlock Plus co-founder Till Faida said in a statement. "The Acceptable Ads Platform lets publishers reach the former group without changing anything about how they’re reaching the latter."
Publishers might point out that such a strategy also involves buying twice as many ads as they might otherwise.
Faida also frames the move as an inevitable consequence of the ad tech industry's supposed refusal to adopt more consumer-friendly standards.
“We’ve been waiting years for the ad-tech industry to do something consumer-friendly like this, so finally we got tired of waiting and decided to just do it ourselves,” Faida said.
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