Adblock No More: Amazon, Microsoft Pay To Sidestep 'Adblock Plus' Browser Extension

Adblock Plus will let advertisers display ads to users of its popular browser extension, but only if they pony up the dough. Ads from Internet giants like Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. will now appear for Adblock Plus users, as well as certain ads from Google Inc.

A new report from Financial Times says that Bing search ads, as well as those from Amazon and Taboola, will now appear for users of Adblock Plus, which has become one of the most widely-used add-ons for Internet users trying to avoid ads, with 64 percent more downloads last year than in 2013.

Adblock Plus users will now see more ads after Microsoft, Amazon and other companies paid its developer, Aeyo, to appear on a “white list” of “acceptable” ads that bypasses the browser extension. Google’s ads have appeared on the site since 2013, reportedly saving it more than $887 million.

Aeyo says the white list allows less aggressive ads through its filter, while blocking more intrusive or annoying ones. The program is optional, but Adblock Plus encourages users to keep it enabled and “support websites that rely on advertising… in a non-intrusive way,” it says on its official site.

Aeyo’s software shares a similar name with another popular ad-blocking browser extension called Adblock. Adblock allows users to unblock advertisements, but claims it is not paid by advertisers to do so.