UPDATED 11:05 EDT / SEPTEMBER 16 2015

NEWS

The Washington Post & Google wage war on adblockers

Google and The Washington Post have declared war on adblocking software by effectively holding people hostage in an effort to get them to switch it off.

Last week, Google made a move against those who use filters to block the pre-video ads that are commonly seen on YouTube. The search engine giant turned the tables on adblocker users by not only blocking their adblocker software, but by forcing them to sit through the entire advertisment, disabling the “Skip Ad” button that normally appears after a few seconds.

And this week, The Washington Post went a step further – it now refuses to let adblocker users read the content on its website, unless they disable the software completely. According to The Post, this tactic is a “short test” that’s designed to “see what users will do next”. The paper added in rather cryptic statement that it often runs tests like this, “not in reaction to a problem, but to learn”.

These actions come at a time when the effect of adblocker software on advertiser’s revenues is increasingly under the spotlight. A study published earlier this year by PageFair (and co-sponsored by Adobe Inc.) reported that almost one in seven netizens use an adblocker of some kind, with the highest proportion being in the younger, middle class, male demographic.

Advertisers typically complain that the use of adblockers has become so prevalent that it risks putting some of them out of business. More importantly perhaps, they claim that many smaller content producers are likely to go under if the use of adblocking tools goes any further, hence their efforts to try and put a stop to it.

One well known Internet marketer went even further, saying that the use of Adblockers was tantamount to thievery. “Sorry ad-blockers, I assume you mean well and you have a point about page-load times and ads junked up with tracking tools and Trojan horses and the like,” complained Advertising Age editor Ken Wheaton recently. “But theft is still theft, even if it’s dressed up as some sort of digital Robin Hood act. You’re not just interfering with pixels, you’re interfering with business.”

On the other hand, those who do use adblockers – and the adblocking companies themselves – retort that so many websites use invasive ads that “degrade” the user experience, and as such, the use of software to block them is more than justified.

But some companies probably do go a bit too far, and their actions could be considered borderline blackmail. For instance, Eyeo GmbH, the company that develops Adblock Plus, one of the most popular adblockers, runs an extremely profitable sideline in whitelisting certain websites so its software doesn’t block their ads. Companies including Amazon.com, Inc., Google and Microsoft are all believed to be paying customers.

Image credit: Skeeze via pixabay.com

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