Amazon, Reddit and Yandex also pay Adblock Plus developers

Recently, the creators of the most popular browser extension for blocking Adblock Plus ad are accused of all mortal sins: they reported at the beginning of the year that they allegedly offered to include sites on the white list in exchange for a full third of the company's advertising budget, and in June the German blogger said Adblock Plus has strategic partners in the advertising industry, calling ABP the advertising mafia.

Recently it became known that the developers of Adblock Plus receive money from Google for the fact that advertising from the search company is not blocked by the extension. After the publication of this news on Habré, representatives of Adblock Plus contacted me and offered to conduct an interview with one of the managing directors of the company Till Fayid. He was not particularly frank, but shared some details.

- Last week, the German site Horizont announced that Google is paying you to ensure that your extension does not block its advertising. Can you confirm this fact?
- Yes, ads and sponsorship links in Google search results, as well as AdSense ads on their partner sites, have been added to the Adblock Plus ad list.

- Was it a one-time payment or did Google regularly transfer some amount to you?
- We do not disclose this information.
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- What is your overall relationship with Google? In March, your application, like other ad blockers, was removed from Google Play, and now it turns out that Google supports you financially.
- Yes, Google contextual advertising was included in the “white list”, as for Google Play, this is another story.

- What other companies are paying to be on the white list?
- For example, Amazon, Reddit, Yandex and others.

- What is the share of funding in your budget from these companies and how much - user donations?
- We do not reveal it.

- How can a regular website with unobtrusive advertising get on the white list?
- To do this, simply apply through our website ( https://adblockplus.org/ru/ ). Further, the advertised advertisement is reviewed for compliance with the criteria for Admissible Advertising. The participants of the forum see the application, and everyone can take part in the discussion of controversial issues and speak out. If the company's advertising complies with the established parameters, and no one has any significant objections, we approve it and include it in the white list.

- Adblock Plus - one of the most popular extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Your influence is so noticeable that you have been called the Internet mafia, which extorts money from web publishers for skipping their ads. What are your criteria for those whose ads can be shown for free, and from whom do you need to take money?
- Some large corporations are paying to support the project. The rates that admissible advertising must meet do not change depending on the company. Comparing organizations from different industries is like comparing apples with oranges. Therefore, we have to take into account many diverse factors. Individual bloggers, news sites, online magazines and newspapers, i.e., can count on free inclusion in the white list (if the considered advertising meets the admissible criteria) sites that produce unique content (even large). Our mission is partly to make advertising acceptable to users.

- How many users have turned off the display of unobtrusive advertising?
- Adblock Plus strictly adheres to the privacy policy and does not collect data about its users. But from the experience of communicating with users, I can assume that they are no more than 5%. When advertising is unobtrusive, many find it very useful.

- On your site it says that you are in favor of the mandatory support of Do Not Track. Does this not contradict the idea of ​​DNT - after all, the advertising market initially agreed to the DNT system if it is not enabled by default for users?
- Naturally, we want to demand respect for the privacy of our users (mandatory support for DNT), but for the time being we are not in a position to force this demand.

- In response to the launch of the white list, several forks separated from you at once. Have you felt the departure of some of the users? How do you intend to continue to compete with similar extensions?
- The option of displaying ads can be turned off with one click, there is no need for forking. At the same time, we are committed to the idea of ​​open source, and if someone uses ours, we do not mind.