Why Google, Microsoft And Amazon Are Fearing This Company And Paying It Too?

Host of tech giants that make money through advertising, including the likes of Google Inc GOOGL, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Microsoft Corporation MSFT have started paying Ad Block Plus, an organizations that makes a free browser add-on which allows users to block ‘annoying ads’, to unblock their ads from its service.

Tom’s Guide editor-in-chief Mark Spoonauer was on CNBC Monday to talk about popularity of ad-blocking softwares and the 'Whitelist'.

How Popular Has Ad-Blocking Software Become?

“Very, because the company behind Ad Block Plus, they got 50 million users right now and this area of the market has grown 70p over the last year and there’s about 144 million users worldwide who are using some sort of ad-blocking program. So, it’s definitely taking off,” Spoonauer replied.

Google, Microsoft And Amazon Have Made Deals To Get On The Whitelist, What’s A Whitelist?

“It’s what they deem to be approvable or acceptable ads and in order to get on the Whitelist, to be in there acceptable ad program, you need to make sure a couple of things," Spoonauer said. "One is that your ads are clearly labelled and to make sure that the reader experience isn’t interrupted or disrupted by ads. So, it’s not just pop-up ads, it could be pop-under ads and little sneaky things that are popping up on websites. A lot of times like visiting a website could feel like bouncing around a slot machine."

Spoonauer cautioned internet publishers saying, “There are some publishers overseas in France and Germany who are actually suing the company behind Ad Blocker Plus, but I think the bottom-line in it is that publishers need to learn to play ball because what Ad Blocker Plus is doing is they are taking a 30p cut of the revenue that publishers otherwise would not even have at all. So, 70p is better than nothing.”