Millions of people
swear by the ad blocker, software that lets you browse the web free of
online advertising. The companies who want you to see the ads are
starting to push back.
On Friday, dozens of people took to web forums and social media to complain that they were blocked from their Yahoo email accounts unless they switched off their ad blockers.
The issue seems to
have first appeared early on Thursday when “portnoyd,” a user on the
AdBlock Plus online support forum, was served a pop-up with an
ultimatum: Turn off your ad blocker, or forget about getting to your
email.
Yahoo confirmed the reports, which were discovered by Digiday. Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., did not say how many users were affected.
“At Yahoo, we are
continually developing and testing new product experiences,” Anne Yeh, a
Yahoo spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This is a test we’re running
for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the U.S.”
The developments with
Yahoo Mail add another facet to the debate over ad blocking. While ad
blockers have been available for desktop web browsers for some time,
Apple in September enabled ad blocking to happen on the mobile web
through its iOS9 mobile operating system.
Web publishers fretted
that ads on their sites couldn’t be viewed, which would threaten their
livelihoods. Ads underlie much of the web and enable the creation of
free content, and limiting ads violates that implicit understanding,
some advertisers and publishers said at the time.
A report about the
spreading usage of ad blocking over the summer also stoked a wave of
anxiety among advertisers and publishers. But while the report indicated
a rising number of users were downloading ad blocking software on
desktop computers, it remains to be seen how many people will use
blockers on their mobile devices.
Still, many in the
industry say that the increased focus on ad blocking has spurred some
publishers to reconsider their advertising models, particularly for
their mobile sites. Besides Yahoo, some publishers are considering ways
to strip out or reduce traditional web display ads on both desktop and
mobile sites, and instead generate revenue through sponsorships or
so-called native advertising.
Yahoo is facing mounting pressure to turn around the company after years of waning search and advertising revenue and a decrease in traffic to its homepage, once a major destination in the world of digital media.
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