Facebook vs Adblockers, a battle against online ads

London - Social media isn't free. For users they may be subscription-free platforms for sharing their lives, but being a for-profit business means corporations are out to make money. Facebook, currently valued at 350 billion dollars, makes most of its profit from advertising, and is reliant on businesses placing ads to advertise to its millions of daily users.

Fashion brands go hand in hand with social media advertising, and at a time when fashion retailers are heavily investing resources into their digital presence, companies such as Adblock are throwing a spanner in the works.

Facebook earns its money from advertising

If almost every penny Facebook makes comes through advertising, adblocking will prove to be a prominent threat. Which is why Facebook is moving quickly to get ahead in its running battle with Adblock Plus, a company that offers software that blocks ads from appearing to its 100 million or so users.

According to the BBC, last week Facebook made tweaks to its news feed so that Adblock Plus (and other similar software) “spotted” ads no longer worked, essentially tricking the blocking software into thinking ads were just normal posts.

"We’re disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook as these new attempts don’t just block ads but also posts from friends and Pages," Facebook said in a statement. Ad blockers are a blunt instrument, which is why we’ve instead focused on building tools like ad preferences to put control in people’s hands.”

Adblocking is controversial

Adblock Plus is a controversial company. While initial ad blockers were all about stopping annoying, sometimes harmful, pop-up ads, Adblock Plus is much sophisticated in its reach.

In 2011 AdBlock Plus attracted considerable controversy from its users when it introduced an "Acceptable Ads" program to allow "certain non-intrusive ads" (such as Google AdWords) to be allowed (whitelisted) under the extension's default settings. While participation in the whitelisting process is free for small websites, large advertising companies, such as Facebook, are required to pay a fee.

Opponents of ad blocking software, including social networks and news outlets, insist that it robs product and content creators of their fair compensation. They call ad block developers racketeers who don’t actually care about the user experience since they demand and accept ransom money in exchange for letting a site’s ads pass through their blocker. Some go as far as to equate blocking ads with stealing services.

Many users would consider any advertising a unwelcome part of their browsing experience, but we must not forget that it’s why Google and Facebook are free to use. The money has to come from somewhere, and right now it’s advertising.

Photo Facebook Headquarters Entrance Sign Menlo Park. Credit: By LPS.1 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Adblock Plus logo: Credit: By Sven Hartz [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons