Ethics of ad blockers

Why should you be concerned about ad blocking? You should be concerned because it will reduce the incentive for the “little guy” to offer content. The cost and the effort to get your site “white listed” works against the participation of individuals or those without sponsers from the opportunity to compete for ad dollars. The following is an excerpt from a post (Page Fair) commenting on Google’s willingness to pay to protect the appearance of ads on its own sites.

Adblock Plus operates an “Acceptable Advertising” scheme, under which “large corporations” must pay to have permissible ad formats (such as sponsored search links) whitelisted. While Adblock Plus believes they are offering a fair compromise, most publishers have likened it to “racketeering” [MondayNote], “extortion” [Tom’s Guide], “shakedown” [Digital Trends], “blackmail” [Pando Daily] and “highway robbery” [Pro Sieben Sat1]. Most controversially, it was revealed in 2013 that Google is dealing with Adblock Plus to get its search ads whitelisted.

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