Three years at Adblock Plus disrupting the industry

Today, exactly three years ago, I joined Eyeo full-time in Cologne. Back then, it was just the six of us, crammed in an office with space for four. And oh my, what an adventure it has been. 

The Product

Back in 2012, we were only supporting Firefox - the cradle of Adblock Plus. Since then we worked hard making Adblock Plus available on platforms where our users want to use our product. And we succeeded in doing so: Adblock Plus is now available for Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Yandex. 

And the short-term outlook is even more exciting. For a long time we have not been able to figure out mobile, and Google kicking us out of the PlayStore in 2013 definitely did not help. This month we will be releasing our Adblock Browser for Android and iOS. On top of this, we'll be releasing a content-blocker for iOS9 mid-September. 

We're betting big on disrupting mobile browsing. 

The Team

In the early days of Eyeo - as with any startup - everyone was wearing multiple hats. I started off in Business Development, did the KPI reporting, did the dishes every week on Friday, assembled desks for our first interns, and even did some PR. Over time, I developed into my current role: Manager of Global Partnerships and the lead of our Growth Team. This process has been great, and I am learning and developing myself every day. 

Since 2012, we have hired great people, all focusing every day on making Adblock Plus the disruptive force in the broken online advertising industry. We now have data scientists, the best of the best developers, a professional QA, PR, HR, UX, legal department etc. And it is a privilege to be able to work with such talented people. 

Acceptable Ads

When we started out with Acceptable Ads, we were welcomed with a lot of criticism. We were compared to the mafia 2.0, a racketeering network etc. This wasn't always easy. However, from the first day I started to contribute to Adblock Plus & Eyeo, I was 100% convinced we were doing the right thing for the Web. This is also captured in our mission statement, and put to practice every day: 

"We want to make the Internet better for everyone. Purging bad ads is a good start"

What we understood in 2012 already, was that the average internet user would not accept the horrifying ads shoved in their browser anymore. Some publishers cram your screen full with auto-playing ads, overlays, pop-ups & -unders, masking ads as content, and in the worst case, serve malware-ridden ads. Somehow the advertising industry expected (hoped) that users are not taking charge of their browsing experience to protect themselves against these atrocities. There always has been a great need and demand to block these ads. 

On the other hand, if the entire online population used an ad blocker that blocks all ads, many of the free websites would disappear. And we believe that publishers need to be able to monetize the free content they produce. This is where our Acceptable Ads initiative comes in.

By advocating a new standard of advertising, we designed our very strict Acceptable Ads criteria (ads should be small, preferably text-only, not obscure the reading-flow and clearly labeled). And this is how hundreds of publishers can monetize the audience they usually would not be able to earn money from. 

And this is exactly the balance we are working hard on every day: protecting our users against bad ads, allowing unobtrusive ads to support free content. And I am proud to be able to contribute to this. 

The User

Although I am proud what we have accomplished with all of the above, nothing comes even close to the accomplishment I feel regarding what we are doing for our users. Our greatest good. And I see it as a privilege to be able to serve them every day.

On a daily basis, tens of millions of users are using Adblock Plus to browse faster, safer and with a much better online experience. Every day we receive emails, tweets, Facebook messages and occasionally letters (!) where they thank us for what we do. And this is for me the main reason why I love contributing to Adblock Plus - the value we are allowed to create for our beloved users. 

One very recent example I'd like to put forward to illustrate this: 

I Had to write you a quick email to tell you that ABP has changed my life. I know it sounds a bit extreme but ever since I started using ABP I can enjoy every MINUTE I'm on the internet. I have not enjoyed the internet so much in my whole life. A friend at worked recommended it and I was suspicious. I thank him everyday now and tell all of my coworkers to download it but people are suspicious like I was. Oh well, their loss. I really just can't believe how much intrusive ads on news sites degrades my quality of life but sorry, it really does! Anyway, thanks for the single best service I use besides email.

Since I began, we have been able to grow our userbase over five-fold. Even more impressive is the fact that our growth is purely organic. No advertising required, just a great product. And our growth contributed largely to the growth as has been reported by Pagefair & Adobe a few weeks back: 

And this development proves that we are doing the right thing.

Disrupting the Industry

In all honesty, I hate the term "Disruption". One of those Bay Area buzzwords coined by virtually every startup. However, only a few can be regarded as truly disruptive: Uber, AirBnB, Google, Tesla, SpaceX to name few well-known examples. And yes, also Eyeo is a true disruptor by nature. 

And yes, also Eyeo is a true disruptor by nature. 

The online advertising industry and old-fashioned publishing houses have enjoyed huge growth in revenues over the last decades, growing to a multi-billion industry. It is expected that within two years the internet advertising revenue  will surpass TV advertising revenue: 

However, the almost exponential growth of use of ad blocking is stirring the industry because they fear for their revenues. And, what happens when old-fashioned firms feel threatened by disruptive technologies? They sue. Over the past years, we have been sued left and right in Germany by rusty old companies such as Axel Springer, Pro7Sat1 and RTL. And they lost. Again and again. 

The ruling in a Munich regional court is the second defeat in as many months for online publishers challenging the software, and Eyeo’s fourth successful defence against court action brought against it.

Instead of looking for innovative ways to monetize free online content, they try to destroy ad blocking. Naturally, such a strategy fails: the user is in control over its browsing experience, not the publishers. If a user doesn't want to see any images, or load any JavaScript, or disable all Flash elements, or block annoying ads, or all ads, this is up to the user. 

Then there seems to be a deep-rooted issue among many of the key stakeholders in the online advertising industry in recognizing the fact that users simply do not want to put up with annoying ads anymore. One of the most shocking quotes I have read over the last months, was from the CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Randall Rothenberg: 

However, Rothenberg has slammed the sentiment, labelling ad blocking as a criminal activity and anyone to dignify ad blocking is "foolish".

This lack of understanding tens of millions of ad block-users and the complete absence of a user-centric perspective on advertising, is unfortunately typical for the industry. For years they have been shoving overlays, pop-unders, flashy animated banners, pre-roll videos into the browser of the user, and then call ad blocking a "criminal activity". This is disappointing and worrying.

Let's not forget, if ads were not this annoying, we would still be a very small project with a few million users. The online advertising industry often forgets that they are solely responsible for our organic growth. They pushed the limits of annoyance of the user for years, and then they are surprised when users look for solutions against their practices. They are the main catalyst and driver of our growth, and are still creating demand for our product.

My hope is that stakeholders such as the IAB will no longer fight against us and our users. They need to understand that we are merely a symptom of the need of a paradigm shift in the online advertising industry. Users are taking control and will not put up with annoying ads any longer. Ads which are unobtrusive, preferably text-only, not interrupting the reading flow, clearly labeled, is the only way forward. 

Having that said, there are a few signs that the industry is starting to accept and embrace ad blocking as the new kid on the block:

Ad-blocking is going to force us to reinvent our world again. Let’s stop complaining and just accept that whatever works best for the consumer is always going to win.

And this is exactly what I call for. My hope is that the online advertising industry will start to think about advertising from a user-centric perspective.

On this note, one of the main personal highlights of the last three years was when Larry Page discussed ad blocking at a shareholders meeting of Google. And, it was incredibly exciting that my biggest personal hero thinks exactly alike as we do at Eyeo:

Part of it is the industry needs to do better at producing ads that are less annoying and that are quicker to load, and all those things. And I think we need to do a better job of that as an industry.