AdBlock Becomes Online Mobsters, Ads Are Allowed As Long As They Pay Up

AdBlock Plus is making some changes with its programming to allow ads, provided they get paid a percentage of what publishers are earning. This essentially makes the service an ad network; exactly the kind of thing it set out to fight against.

AdBlock Plus is an ad blocking service that essentially prevented annoying popup windows, screens that can’t be closed, and getting redirected to other pages without permission. This made it the most popular provider of its kind, but that might be about to change. With the changes that it is going to implement, it’s difficult to tell which side will be more upset at the company, Ad Week notes.

The ad blocking tool is owned by Eyeo GmbH and it announced its intention to allow ads through if they are deemed acceptable through a blogpost. These ads will go through a selection program where the publishers and advertisers will need to agree to certain conditions with regards to how the ads will be placed or shown to ensure that they are not “annoying” to the users. In exchange, the company will get a cut of the profit made by the publishers.

Setting aside the fact that this goes completely against what AdBlock Plus is meant to do, it also cuts into the business of publishers and advertisers in a way that makes its actions completely questionable. Aside from that, the company also implied that it managed to get both Google and AppNexus onboard. This is not true, Business Insider reports.

The Wall Street Journal was one of the first to report on the surprising announcement that Google and AppNexus would be supplying the ads that would then be featured in the selection program of AdBlock Plus, which the two companies are already denying. As it turns out, not only did they not agree to anything, they didn’t even know about the program in the first place.