To block, or not to block, that is the question

COLOGNE, Germany – Adblock Plus, the #1 browser extension for blocking annoying online advertisements, announced that it has opened a public forum discussion to define native advertising and debate whether there are instances where native advertising might be considered to conform to its industry-first Acceptable Ads guidelines.

“As online advertising formats evolve, it is our responsibility at Adblock Plus to understand them and define when these new formats should be blocked, and if and when they can be classified as Acceptable Ads”

Adblock Plus is a simple add-on for web browsers that blocks annoying banner ads and pop-ups on web pages, video ads on YouTube and intrusive ads on Facebook—but allows website owners to apply for whitelisting if they agree to run only ‘acceptable’ ads on their site. Some commenters claim that native advertising can be a form of legitimate information content, and therefore should whitelisted.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently convened a group of advertisers and publishers to define parameters for so-called native ads. Their work resulted in the “IAB Native Advertising Playbook,” but it left out an important group from the equation: users.

So Adblock Plus has called upon its large open source community of users to publicly debate whether to update the Acceptable Ads evaluative framework to acknowledge native ads, and to define if any forms of native advertising might meet the Acceptable Ads criteria.

“As online advertising formats evolve, it is our responsibility at Adblock Plus to understand them and define when these new formats should be blocked, and if and when they can be classified as Acceptable Ads,” said Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus and the open-source project that supports it. “On the one hand, native ads are a positive reaction against ad intrusiveness; on the other hand, the seamless integration of advertising within editorial content blurs what we think should be a clearly distinguishable line between the two. So we are calling upon our public forum of Internet users to form an opinion and suggest some guidelines.”

Adblock Plus is in the unique position of having an enormous user base of Internet users who are ad-averse, as well as having a direct dialog with advertisers about how to re-engineer their ads to be less intrusive.

“Since the IAB has given advertisers a chance to weigh in on the definition of native ads, we want to give users an open platform to contribute as well. We invite everyone to explore the native ads forum at https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=19869&start=0 and engage in a lively discussion,” added Faida.

Links:

Be part of the native ads discussion: https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=19869&start=0

View all Adblock Plus public forum topics: https://adblockplus.org/forum/

Install Adblock Plus for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or Android: www.adblockplus.org

Download Adblock Plus for Android: https://adblockplus.org/en/android-install

About Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus is a community-driven, open source project to rid the Internet of annoying and intrusive online advertising. Its free web browser extensions (add-ons) put users in control by letting them block or filter which ads they want to see. Adblock Plus has more than 250 million downloads, and gets upwards of 2 million new downloads each week. PC Magazine voted Adblock Plus the best free Chrome extension for 2013; PC World rated Adblock Plus as a top innovation in its 100 Best Products of 2007 list; and in 2010 the Adblock Plus project earned the Linux New Media award for the Best Open Source Firefox Extension.

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AdblockPlus or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/adblockplus, and read our blog at http://adblockplus.org/blog/