Adblock representatives responded to criticism by the UK authorities against ad blockers

The UK Secretary of Culture, John Whitingdale, has recently described startups and companies specializing in advertising blocking as “modern and legalized racketeering” during a speech at the Oxford Media Convention. In his speech, he promised to provide support to publications in order to compensate for the negative consequences of the use of ad blockers.

The journalists of The Guardian noted the harshness of the statements made by the government representative to the ad blockers, who suggest adding some advertisers to the white lists for an additional fee.
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“It's very simple, if people don't pay for content in any way, then content doesn't exist,” says John Whitingdale.

In response to this criticism, communications manager Ben Williams of Eyeo, who owns Adblock Plus, sent an answer to Business Insider to John Whittingdale. Currently, Adblock Plus offers users the ability to display "unobtrusive ads." According to experts, about 30% of advertising budgets of companies such as Google, Amazon or Criteo go to pay for permission to display their advertising.

“During a recent speech at the Oxford Media Convention, Minister of Culture John Whittingdale expressed his thoughts on the growing popularity of ad blockers and their influence on publications, as well as the music industry. We cannot fully share his beliefs, but fully agree on the need for cooperation to solve a number of problems that have arisen in advertising - not only between advertisers, but publishers, ad blockers, advertising platforms, but also consumers.

The popularity of ad blockers shows obvious dissatisfaction on the part of users with the current type of advertising. Advertisements are becoming increasingly intrusive and therefore an increasing number of users prefer to use ad blockers. This is especially evident from the results of a recent study - the share of ad blockers increased from 18 to 22% since October 2015, and we expect a further increase in this indicator.

Without ad blockers, end users have no influence on their Internet experience and their security, ”said Ben Williams.

The idea of ​​creating optimal advertising options that will suit users and advertisers is not new. But ad blockers are primarily criticized for creating their own solutions, which publishers do not have access to - in fact only the largest market players can use it . Others do not have alternative types of advertising, which is unlikely to ever suit site owners.