12/04/17 - From nasty to nice: how adblockers are trying to pivot

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/12/adblockers-trying-pivot-nasty-nice

The article focuses on the fact that Adblock Plus has been highly controversial amongst users, developers and publishers. The fact of the matter is that it is incredibly difficult to monetize the internet, and in the early days, the use of adverts on the internet were highly crucial to the generation of ad revenue by publishers and companies. The AdBock Plus software was highly used by people around the world, however there were many cases where the company chose to whitelist certain corporations if they were able to pay certain amounts. AdBlock Plus has also been known in the past to create and develop different aspects of advertising for companies that are considered less annoying than standard adverts.

• Adblocker developers argued that ad-supported media on the net was abusing its readers
• Publishers argued that blocking ads was tantamount to theft
• Britain’s IAB estimates 22% of visitors block ads, the same as this time last year
• Some sites have started appealing to the morality of visitors, pointing out that blocking adverts deprives publishers of revenue, and requesting adblocking readers whitelist their domains.

Personally, I think it's great that AdBlock Plus are coming up with different ways to improve the relationship and working between users, developers and publishers. A lot of the time users want to remove these adverts that they find annoying, however at the same time a publisher's bills need to be paid and the only way they can do so is by cashing in on ad revenue from the content that they create. Although I think its great that a sort of middle ground is appearing, however I think that its important to not to lose sight of the greater picture which is the internet being a place of freedom.