The latest figures from Adblock Plus will no doubt be ringing alarm bells for advertisers and publishers, as downloads close in on 1 billion.
A sharp increase from the 500 million recorded at the beginning of the year, the ad blocking company now has more than 50 million active users and is installed on 100 million devices – a tenth of which are on iOS and Android.
The figures were revealed by Till Faida, founder of Adblock maker Eyeo, at a TechCrunch conference in New York on Monday, where Faida blamed the IAB for the rise of ad blocking.
“We’re in this mess because the IAB has failed to create an advertising ecosystem that is sustainable and healthy,” he said.
“What we’re all about is empowering our users to have control over their browsing experience.”
As a result, AdBlock Plus has recently launched Flattr Plus, a new payment system for online content that lets users decide how they want to compensate publishers – which lose around £15 billion a year from ad blocking.
[advert position=”left”]
“What has been missing so far is a payment system on the web that works everywhere and is frictionless,” Faida said, estimating that Flattr Plus will acquire 10 million users by the end of 2017, each prepared to pay $5 per month on average as compensation.
IAB UK’s director of data and industry programmes, Steve Chester, said the news that Faida has openly blamed the IAB for failing to create an advertising ecosystem that is sustainable and healthy is “disappointing and simply not true”.
“Ad blocking is simply an accelerator for change that is already taking place,” Chester said.
“Through the IAB LEAN standards, we are working collaboratively with the wider industry and consumers to forge sustainable advertising which respects the consumer experience at all times, whilst enabling publishers to make revenue to continue funding the important content and services that they offer. It’s about finding balance and delivering consumer choice.”
