Adblock Plus and (a little) more
IAB dis-invites us, disses compromise and buries dissent · 2016-01-15 15:28 by Ben Williams
Last year we sent someone to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Leadership Conference. Even if we don’t always agree, it was a constructive event. Well, we wanted to go this year too. But after buying a ticket, booking a flight and reserving a room, we got, ahem, dis-invited. It left us a bit confused: how can the IAB top brass still think ad blocking will just go away? Why are their heads so firmly entrenched in the sand?
Acceptable Ads evolves, transparency too · 2015-12-16 15:35 by Job Plas
Today, we are announcing updates to the Acceptable Ads criteria while keeping the core values. The idea is to make Acceptable Ads easier to understand, even if you don’t have a background in ads, while providing a perfect starting point for the Acceptable Ads Committee which will take over in 2016. Finally, transparency is critical for us so we are releasing more public information on how we monetize with Acceptable Ads.
Global research study of ad formats confirms what you already knew: disruptive ads don’t work · 2015-12-10 11:10 by Ben Williams
We just commissioned a survey with Ipsos, the market research firm, which asked over 5,000 users in three countries what they thought about 13 different type of ad. The results were not surprising: people don’t like ads that are big, blinking and intrusive; whereas more subtle formats are not perceived as disruptive.
#CampDavid NYC · 2015-11-12 12:43 by Ben Williams
Last Tuesday in New York we hosted #CampDavid NYC, a meeting of publishers, advertisers, journalists, nonprofits and tech groups to help us formulate our newly announced Acceptable Ads ‘board’. The first thing they said was, “don’t call it board.” For our part, we just did a whole lot of listening …
Smells like censorship, Big Brother · 2015-10-23 19:35 by Ben Williams
Bild.de started blocking users of ad blocking technology recently. We basically said, OK, that’s your right. In the meantime there were discussions in our forum about a way to counter the Bild blockade — these were basically users and forum moderators discussing how they could build a filter, quite independent of ABP or any other affiliation. Just users. Just free speech at its finest. Well, Bild’s publisher asked us to take those discussions down, we declined and just this evening we received a court order forcing us to take them down.
From the Manifesto to the Acceptable Ads Board · 2015-10-01 21:48 by Ben Williams
When we wrote the Acceptable Ads Manifesto last year, we were already thinking about how we might improve the Acceptable Ads initiative while stepping back from it as a company. Today, we’re happy to say that we’ve decided to commit to an idea we had long ago: an independent board made up of representatives for users, advertisers and publishers to assume complete control of Acceptable Ads.
Axel Springer goes home empty-handed in unsuccessful lawsuit against users’ rights · 2015-09-29 15:18 by Ben Williams
Axel Springer, the multibillion dollar publishing house that just today bought Business Insider for $343m and recently lost a high stakes bidding war to Japan’s largest media company, Nikkei, for rights to purchase the Financial Times, has sued our startup right here in our home town of Cologne, Germany. Once again, the courts ruled in favor of users’ rights, declaring that ad blocking is completely legal.
Latest Firefox update massively improves Adblock Plus memory usage · 2015-09-23 16:06 by Ben Williams
Mozilla pushed the newest update of its Firefox browser yesterday. This will improve Adblock Plus memory usage for Firefox users immensely and immediately.
Peace out ... and long live Crystal · 2015-09-20 12:31 by Ben Williams
We heard with regret that Peace pulled out of the App Store. That sucks, but the good news is that we’ll be there any time now, and in the meantime there are lots of great solutions out there like Crystal to test out.
First official ad blocker for iOS launches today; ditto for Android · 2015-09-08 11:15 by Ben Williams
While Apple gears up for iOS 9 and media speculate on some apps in private beta, we’ve gone ahead and launched. That’s right, starting right now you can download Adblock Browser from the App Store for your Apple devices and from the Google Play Store for your Android ones.