The Internet’s next victim: Advertising

(Credit: iStock/Salon)

 

“Everyone agrees that advertising on the Internet is broken,” says Till Faida, CEO of Adblock Plus, creator of by far the most popular ad-blocking software on the Web.

The soft-spoken German, visiting the San Francisco Bay Area to network and drum up support for his company’s “Acceptable Ads” initiative, sketches out a distressing scenario: Ads aren’t generating enough revenue, so websites are forced to run ever more “aggressive” ads — a maddening deluge of pop-ups, blinking banners, and autoplaying video and audio commercials. But as ads steadily become even more annoying, users click even less, forcing revenues down even further.



“This is creating a vicious circle, which will at some point lead to the whole system collapsing,” says Faida.
Faida believes he can help avoid that apocalyptic scenario. It might seem a little strange to hear that the CEO of a company whose main product is designed to quash ads is dedicated to the goal of saving advertising — certainly, the owners of websites whose revenues are crimped by Adblock Plus users could be excused for looking askance. But Faida believes that he can leverage Adblock Plus’ market power — the company claims 50 million active users — to create market incentives that force online advertisers to behave.

It’s a bold claim, and when you look closely, there’s a big catch. Because Adblock Plus’ business model — the way the company plans to generate a profit — is to charge big advertisers a fee to not block some of their ads.

An ad-blocking company that cashes in by letting some ads through? Isn’t that, uh, false advertising?
But not all ads are bad, argues Faida. A veteran of online marketing who joined Adblock Plus in 2010, Faida makes the perfectly logical argument that the Web needs a healthy advertising industry to support its vast array of free services. And 80 percent of Adblock Plus’ users, claims Faida, have no objection to ads that aren’t obnoxious.

Left unanswered, however, is the question of whether a world full of “acceptable ads” is a world in which advertising actually pays the bills. Because “acceptable” doesn’t just mean “not annoying.” It also means “easy to ignore.” And if advertising is easy to ignore, it doesn’t work.