Adblock Plus reveals how it’s charging companies to let ads through your ad blocker

Adblock Plus, one of the world’s most popular ad blockers, is pushing to separate its acceptable ads program from its core business and make it appear more independent.

Acceptable advertising is a controversial program in which sites can pay the company to allow their advertising through the filter, where it would usually be automatically blocked.

Some large companies, including Google, are rumored to pay the company to show you ads despite the fact that you’ve installed an ad blocker. Adblock Plus argues that the program is opt-out, however it is sometimes confusing what’s really going on.

As part of that initiative, Adblock Plus has today revealed just what the program involves, how much money it asks for and who it requires to pay for their ads to slip through the filter.

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According to the company, only “large entities” need to pay to get on the list while smaller players are able to join the program for free, provided their advertising fits within the criteria.

Larger entities are defined as websites with more than 10 million ad impressions “due to” participation in the program. It asks for a whopping 30 percent of the revenues gained from whitelisting, which likely add up to huge numbers.

The company says that for smaller entities it doesn’t require participants to pay, since it’s funded by the larger players.

Adblock has also updated the Acceptable Advertising criteria to define what placement is acceptable, how advertising must appear in articles and the maximum size they may be, in an effort to increase transparency.

The pursuit of transparency by Adblock Plus is admirable, though it’s never going to be entirely impartial as it uses the money to fund its own business.

The cut it asks for — 30 percent of advertising revenue above the 10 million mark — is a huge chunk of revenues from publishers who don’t exactly have the money lying around already and is money that could be spent better on building other ways to provide value to readers.

Still, it’s a bold step from a company who made its fortunes blocking advertising and is one that offers a solution to blanket ad blocking to publishers for the first time.

➤ Adblock Plus and a little more [ABP]