For companies that rely on advertising revenue, Adblock Plus can be their worst nightmare. For the consumers, Adblock Plus can totally alter their Internet browsing experience. If it’s true to what it’s claiming, Adblock Plus is designed to block out most website-based ads in order to deliver a clean computing experience.
The issue however points to the fact that there are still some ads that managed to get through. These ads, which were reported to have come from Google, have drawn suspicions that the company must be paying for their ads to appear smoothly.
The truth is, Adblock Plus actually has the so-called ‘acceptable ads’ filter. Through this filter, certain contents were allowed by way of default. Moreover, the company had disclosed that it had been charging big companies for availing of their whitelisting services.
The charge fee that they have collected is used for the maintenance of their filter list. While the latter whitelists some small blogs and websites at no extra cost, it somehow charges those bigger participating companies such as Google. However, it is very easy to notice when Google and other huge companies have been paying some fees to buy rights in displaying their web-based ads. After these companies are allowed of access by Adblock Plus which acts as a gatekeeper, they can now reach out to their big chunk of consumers. Through this, Adblock Plus gains a powerful stand and notable paying companies such as Google certainly have more advantages than their medium-leveled non-paying competitors.
To get a clearer idea of online advertising, Hacker News has started a discussion about the general merits of advertising on the net. While the topic on Adblock Plus and its whitelisting policies may be out of your league, the discussion has somehow sparked a great amount of interests to several consumers. Comments on the discussion showed varying opinions as some believes that businesses such as Google were using AbBlock to manipulate the industry while others believe that it was just a business game play.
