Adblock Plus: the nuclear plug-in

Adblock Plus, the Firefox browser plug-in that erases advertisements from web pages, is a killer of a killer app – or at least it could be if it ever becomes widely popular. Right now, it sits like a coyote at the edge of the net, quietly eyeing all the businesses it would happily devour.

The plug-in, writes Noam Cohen in today’s New York Times, has the potential to be an “extreme menace to the online-advertising business model. After an installation that takes but a minute or two, Adblock usually makes all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No Google ads based on the search terms you have entered. From that perspective, the program is an unwelcome arrival after years of worry that there might never be an online advertising business model to support the expense of creating entertainment programming or journalism, or sophisticated search engines, for that matter.”

Some 2.5 million people currently use the open-source plug-in, estimates its inventor, Wladimir Palant, and the program is being freshly downloaded 300,000 to 400,000 times a month. The number of users is not yet high enough to spur a counterattack by the big guns in web advertising. “For now,” writes Cohen, they “have decided to ignore the phenomenon.” Google, which has by far the most to lose, refused Cohen’s request for comment. The company is in a particularly dicey position. The broad adoption of ad-blocking software could devastate its business, yet an outright attempt to block the use of such programs would run counter to its often-expressed commitment to give users what they want. If web users decide they don’t want to see ads, Google would face an extremely unpleasant dilemma. Either its business or its credibility would end up in tatters.

That’s why Google’s best course – maybe it’s only course – is to avoid any mention of Adblock (which would only serve to raise people’s awareness of it) and hope that it remains a niche product. The odds would seem, at this point, to be in Google’s favor. There’s no evidence that Adblock Plus or similar products are about to go viral. In fact, there’s no evidence that the masses view online ads as a nuisance.

Then again, you never know. Viral events are unpredictable.

The most interesting aspect of Cohen’s article is that one company with a big stake in the ad business, Microsoft, did choose to offer a comment – and it’s a fascinating one. While carefully avoiding any endorsement of ad-blocking plug-ins, Microsoft also carefully avoids any criticism of them. (Although Adblock Plus works only with Firefox and related browsers, other ad blockers are available for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.) Indeed, it seems to be giving its tacit approval to the development and use of the plug-ins:

In a statement, Microsoft spoke of its success in permitting third-party developers to “add value to the browser experience through the creation of add-ons.” The statement continues: “The range of add-ons available does include ad blocking software. It would not be appropriate for Microsoft to comment on the merits or demerits of a specific add-on, or group of add-ons. Provided they have not been designed with malicious intent and do not compromise a user’s privacy or security, Microsoft is pleased to see new add-ons that add to the range of options that users have for customizing their browsing experience.”

Microsoft’s laissez-faire attitude may seem surprising, but it reflects a cold strategic calculation. Microsoft knows that ad blockers pose a far greater threat to Google than to itself. As they say: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

31 thoughts on “Adblock Plus: the nuclear plug-in

  1. Danny Carlton

    “Some 2.5 million people currently use [Adblock Plus]”

    Surely 2.5 million people actively attempting to block out online ads qualifies as evidence that they find them a nuisance?

    2.5 million has downloaded. There’s no evidence that 2.5 million actually use it. There’s a big difference.

    His site was defaced and hacked about a week ago …

    No, it never was. Someone put up a fake domain, similar to the original, bragged that he’d hacked mine, then made money off the ad on the fake domain.

    Any site that blocks firefox user because use it deserves to fail. Not because the owner is evil, but because he is too stupid to run a business.

    My sites have all been performing better than before, so apparently blocking FireFox improves the business model. Besides blocking Mozilla was a statement, not a business decision. And it got noticed by the NYT and several other highly trafficked blogs and people are now discussing what had been under the wire. Mission accomplished.

  2. Dunedain971

    Until there are laws against aggressive ads people should be blocking them, what many do not realize is that in all things such as these the masses hold a great deal of power. But alas, most people are sheep and will continue to follow the old model since that’s what they’re used to. I will happily view ads once I can be sure that I won’t have to have some flying window in my face, or some flash ad that suddenly cheers every time I accidentally hover the mouse pointer over it. If the ad-makers would make their ads like Google’s (Which I btw have whitelisted) there will be no need for AdBlockers.

    But until that day I believe more and more people will block ads.

  3. Wladimir Palant

    @Danny Carlton:

    Surely 2.5 million people actively attempting to block out online ads qualifies as evidence that they find them a nuisance?

    2.5 million has downloaded. There’s no evidence that 2.5 million actually use it. There’s a big difference.

    I wonder where you got this statement from. I explicitly stated that Adblock Plus has estimated 2.5 million users – and I know the difference between downloads and users. The download numbers are somewhere beyond 10 million, and I get my estimates for user numbers from indirect sources.

    then made money off the ad on the fake domain.

    I haven’t seen any ads on this domain. But it sums ups the essence of your site very nicely. As to the “hack” – I guess somebody simply misunderstood, the difference between whyfirefoxis and whyisfirefox isn’t so obvious at the first glance.

    My sites have all been performing better than before

    Because you trolled to get inbound links. This is a temporary improvement – and yes, any site owner being delusional enough to think that blocking out a significant percentage of Internet users (15% by the lowest estimates) will help his cause deserves to fail.

    By the way, thank you for bringing attention to Adblock Plus, my site has been doing better than before as well.

  4. Zpanzer

    Adblock is far from a bad thing. It’s the advertisements own damn fault that people dislike their adds so much and it’s only well deserved that all users get a choice to block thoose infernal things. IF the advertisement agencies learned something from google, this problem wouldn’t be here. The problem is that most advertisements don’t really care about the users that have to stand them. Flash animations are the worst and the problem is now a days is that it’s possible to code all kinds of things into them and by that, compromizing the users security and trust for other adds. It’s a collective punishment, and to be honost(as a all day user of the internet) it’s well deserved. If all adds were like googles adsense, I doubt there would be any problem, but I guess the advertisement agencies ruined it for them self… pretty neat huh?

  5. Tigger

    Yes I use Adblocker – do I block everything ? No, just the annoying ones that get in the way of using a web site ( intellitext a prime example ). What I’d say to folks who want adverts is to sign up to AOL and get all the adverts you can handle

    I agree totally with those who view ‘in your face’ adverts as counter productive and the whole reason that advert blocking raised its head in the first place, just as pop-ups got to the state that pop-up blocking became popular !

    Overuse if deadly in the advertising game and its time the advertisers remembered this.

  6. eas

    Advertisers have always been involved in a give and take. They want attention, but too much attention can be a bad thing (people might change the channel, etc).

    I’m like a lot of people here, I only block the most obnoxious ads. For my part, that is any flash ad that seems to be taxing my system, especially if it is on a site I read frequently (sorry, Arrington) or that is so flashy, noisy, or obnoxious that it threatens to provoke a seizure. In the process, I’m sure I block more benign ads carried by the same ad servers. Maybe that’ll make advertisers think more carefully about who they do business with.

    It’s actually really simple. If advertisers don’t want their ads blocked, they should avoid making ads that people want to block. Of course, different people have different standards of the ads they tolerate, ad blockers provide a sort of discriminatory pricing mechanism. As long as publishers and advertisers don’t push users too far, most of them aren’t going to take the nuclear option.

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