Proposal to improve Acceptable Ads criteria

[sepfms]

Hi everyone,

First of all, a disclosure: I'm the CEO of Smashing Magazine, a leading online magazine for web designers and developers.

Here's my opinion on Affiliate Links:
Affiliate ads are a kind of paid content, and paid content is a betrayal to the reader. It's a hidden advertisement, and the Adblock Plus (and our) guidelines require that all advertisements are marked as such.

If someone posts an affiliate link, she will in most cases mention a product or service she otherwise wouldn't have mentioned. She wants to make money through advertising for others without admitting it.

Mixing up content and advertising without acknowledging the readers is wrong. I'm strongly against whitelisting affiliate links.

To go further, paid content shouldn't be the future of the web. Many publishers feel forced to go this way because of Adblockers, but I think that is so wrong!

Markus

[ManuelC]

Hi everyone,

First of all, a disclosure: I'm the CEO of Smashing Magazine, a leading online magazine for web designers and developers.

Here's my opinion on Affiliate Links:
Affiliate ads are a kind of paid content, and paid content is a betrayal to the reader. It's a hidden advertisement, and the Adblock Plus (and our) guidelines require that all advertisements are marked as such.

If someone posts an affiliate link, she will in most cases mention a product or service she otherwise wouldn't have mentioned. She wants to make money through advertising for others without admitting it.

Mixing up content and advertising without acknowledging the readers is wrong. I'm strongly against whitelisting affiliate links.

To go further, paid content shouldn't be the future of the web. Many publishers feel forced to go this way because of Adblockers, but I think that is so wrong!

Markus

Thanks for your suggestion. You are right: users should always be able to distinguish between paid and organic content. We are constantly working on improving the criteria based on feedback like yours, and will make sure that affiliate links are held to the same standard as any other ad when it comes to transparency in the next iteration.

[letsnurture]

Agree, but now a day people are more willing to see picture ads, flash banners and videos. CTR are more impressive than the textual one.

[greiner]

Agree, but now a day people are more willing to see picture ads, flash banners and videos.

Do you have any - preferably scientific - sources to back up this statement?

[sirjaime]

There are No "acceptable" amount of ads, other than what we can't get away from, like these new YOUTUBE ads that are the video itself.
Now get on the ball and fix this. y'all hv my money.

[mapx]

if it's about chrome, see:
viewtopic.php?p=137963#p137963

[TEF3]

Unsure where to post this issue. The latest version of Adblock Plus (as of 29Sep15) is being identified as a virus by Norton Securities.

[mapx]

ABP for IE ? it's some false positive from norton

[TEF3]

Yes! Norton Securities identified AdBlock Plus for IE as SAPE.Adload.25a.

[mapx]

ok, thanks, I warned the developers about this issue.
Anyway, probably you could add an exception in norton securities for ABP for IE.

[toddmallen]

I'd like to enable this, but unfortunately, it's not quite there yet. Yes, moving and shouting and flashing ads are annoying, and is one of the reasons I use an adblocker. But the other is running one search for auto parts, and then watching car part ads pop up everywhere for the next few days. That's creepy. So until you get either a no tracking pledge (preferable), or at the very least make honoring Do Not Track mandatory, I'm going to leave this off.

Get that fixed, and I just might consider turning it on and trying it. But ads violating my privacy are at least as significant a problem as ads that just annoy me.

[ShapCyber]

Drop this Idea now, the gold that user are seen in ADBLOCK is that it enables them to enjoy their online time. The beauty of a site even comes out better without an annoying advert. Trust me believe it or not Now YouTube is forcing their users to sign up for subscription before 22/10/15. Why? Because Adblock push them to do so as advert rendering has reduced. Please don't even think about white-listing any site. Let me choose . Million of user install adblock because of that credibility.

I don't know may be in future we could ask people to pay small amount towards the development of Adblock after all people paid average $30 for security software and what adblock is doing almost equivalent to that.

Please ! Please !! Please Never white-List

[chaz25]

Hi,

Apologies for posting here, but I can not find another suitable place to do it.

I want to have my companies website whitelisted, however, the link to the form is broken: https://eyeo.com/acceptable-ads-application.html and the main eyeo.com site has been offline for over a month. How can I apply to have my site whitelisted from ad-blocker?

Thanks Chaz

[mapx]

I can visit the page with the form and the main page. What error did you get ?
There is also an e-mail address: acceptableads@adblockplus.org

[TheDoubleJ]

Do I think text links should be allowed?
Yes, only if they do not expand when your mouse is hovering above the link.