Announcing the Acceptable Ads program | Hacker News Reader

Announcing the Acceptable Ads program

9 pointsgiis5 comments

Hi, it's Michael, the creator of AdBlock. Pardon the interruption!

For years I have wanted to help make it easy for you to see useful ads and block annoying ones. I am excited to tell you that it's finally happening.

AdBlock is now participating in the Acceptable Ads program. Acceptable Ads defines strict guidelines to identify non-annoying ads, which AdBlock now shows by default. This way, you can help support your favorite websites -- and if you still want to block every ad, you can disable this easily.

Want more details? </snip> You can learn more about Acceptable Ads here. Like I said: AdBlock has enabled this feature by default, but you can can disable it in AdBlock’s Options if you ever want to block every ad. I think you'll really like the change. Happy surfing!

Michael

PS: Why now? Well, I have always shared similar goals for the Web with the ad blocker Adblock Plus, who created the Acceptable Ads program. But I did not like the fact that they also control the program, because they are supported by some Acceptable Ads advertisers. Now, Adblock Plus will be transferring custodianship of Acceptable Ads to an impartial group of experts. I love this idea -- in fact, it was my wife Katie’s suggestion! Due to this change, I'm happy for AdBlock to join the program. As a result, I am selling my company, and the buyer is turning on Acceptable Ads. My long-time managing director will keep working with the new company. I believe this is a great thing for you users.

It's been an honor to make the Web a better place for you! :)

Thanks for this announcement Michael.

I do online advertising for a living and have been in the space for a long time. Part of the growing frustration from people subjected to display placements in particular has been the degraded user experience that stems from massive amounts of ad server calls and the privacy issues that come from all of that data being shared (not to mention cookie onboarding services, DMPs and such).

The Acceptable Ads policy doesn't seem to address those issues at all (unless I'm missing something, in which case please by all means point me in the right direction so I can edit this post). What is your (and AdBlock's) stance on those issues? Do you think the Acceptable Ads policy goes far enough in combating these issues?

One of the larger reasons for Apple's recent ad blocking update has been the insane decline of mobile performance as more and more JS tags are loaded. Just this morning I read an article on the Chicago Sun Times website and my WASP Inspector plugin logged over 330+ ad server calls. Thank god I was on my laptop or my old Nexus 4 would have choked completely. The poor visual experience was only one part of the problem. The other part is happening behind the scenes in a way that users only notice from what they read, browser plugins, and when their experience becomes unbearably slow or crashes.

Really curious for your thoughts on how we can solve the other half of this problem collectively--and I say that as someone whose livelihood depends on ads continuing to be useful drivers of revenue and value for the companies that use them to grow their business.

Sorry about the confusion, Please see my reply to dang.

Please don't post this as if you wrote it, unless you actually wrote it. If you're quoting it, please make clear it's a quote.

oops!,sorry. I didn't realize it that way. I don't think I can edit it now. Will remember this in mind for future posts.

URL: chrome-extension://gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom/pages/acceptable-ads-announcement.html

Here's the Chrome URL of the original announcement: chrome-extension://gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom/pages/acceptable-ads-announcement.html

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