Facebook hates ad blockers so much it now blocks them

Even if you use Facebook’s new advertising tools, you’ll still see the same amount of ads.

From a technical standpoint, Facebook is able to circumvent ad blockers relatively easily because it loads ads into its service itself. Some 84 per cent of ad revenues came from messages delivered to mobile devices. But users are more likely to access Facebook’s app on smartphones and tablets, which are less susceptible to ad blocking than personal computers. On Tuesday, it introduced changes that make it harder for people to block ads from appearing on its desktop website.

The use of ad blockers has soared in popularity worldwide over the past few years as the software becomes easier to use and consumers more aware of the extensive tracking capabilities of online advertisers. This may mean Facebook has a new way of serving the ads so that ad blockers can’t detect them.

Most ad blocking companies also accept money in one form or another in return for whitelisting ads on a particular site, a practice the industry trade group Interactive Advertisement Bureau (IAB) has equated to an “old-fashioned extortion racket”. You can also stop seeing ads from businesses and organizations that have you on their customer list.

Facebook announced a new program today that will give users more control over how they see ads on FB, while simultaneously attacking ad blocking itself. Last year, business publication City AM became the first United Kingdom publisher to implement anti-ad blocking technology on its website after a successful trial.

“This isn’t something that we need or are motivated to do for revenue, this is something that we really believe in”, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook’s ads chief tells Business Insider.

The platform says its making the changes as a response to people’s general concerns about online ads.

“You can easily customize the ads you see in the news feed”, a cheeful video explains, noting that you “can find personally relevant ads that speak directly to the topics you care about”.

The thinking behind the move, says Facebook, is to eliminate complaints that folks have had about irrelevant or irritating ads and, in the process, take away their reason for wanting ad blockers. Use of blockers still ranges between 5 to 15 percent on most newspaper websites and thus can be absorbed without huge revenue impact because the inventory of available space does not sell out. When you see ads on most sites, those ads are served by third-party ad networks.

Facebook can, at least in theory, short-circuit this approach by creating its own custom advertising that would embed ads in the same format it uses for stories.