Adblock Plus: the nuclear plug-in
Adblock Plus, the Firefox browser plug-in that erases advertisements from web pages, is a killer of a killer app - or at least it would be if it became widely popular. Right now, it sits like a coyote at the edge of the net, quietly eyeing all the businesses it would happily devour.
Context & Ripple Effects
Adblock Plus arrives through Firefox at a point when the browser was reported to be gaining or holding market share in early 2007, giving a small, easy-to-install extension a potentially expanding distribution base. Its significance is not the software alone but the user’s ability to remove the display inventory on which many sites depend.
The accompanying New York Times examination of ad whiting-out framed the same question: whether cleaner pages for individual users impose a broader cost on ad-supported publishing.
First-order effects
- Firefox users who install Adblock Plus no longer see the advertisements selected for the pages they visit, while publishers and advertisers lose those users’ ad exposure.
Second-order effects
- Sites reliant on display advertising face pressure to make revenue less dependent on ads that a browser extension can suppress, while advertisers must treat page loads as a weaker proxy for ads actually seen.
Third-order effects
- If browser-based blocking spreads with Firefox’s audience, control over web advertising shifts from publishers’ page design toward users’ browser settings, sharpening the conflict between user experience and ad-funded content.
The trend: Ad blocking is an early test of whether browser extensions can give users unilateral control over the advertising layer of the web.