Ad blockers will no longer work on Facebook

Ad blockers will no longer work on Facebook as social network developers will present new advertising format with advanced possibilities.

Modern Internet contains tons of advertisement. Most of it is really straightforward, annoying and useless. Lots of Internet users are installing different software in order to block as much ads as possible. As advertisement generates huge income for internet related industries, such software causes quite significant losses.

NY Times says:

“Ad blockers have become a threat to publishers including The New York Times and The Wall StreetJournal, which are facing declining advertising revenue. About 200 million people worldwide use ad-blocking software on their desktop computers, according to estimates from PageFair, an anti-ad-blocking start-up. An additional 420 million use ad blockers on their smartphones”

Such enterprise as Facebook that exists and grows on funds gained from advertisement can not afford themselves do nothing with ad blockers. 84% of Facebook income in last quarter were received from advertisement. You can only imagine how much they are losing with ad blockers.

That is why Facebook developers will be applying changes to the advertisement modules of the social network that make all ads blocking software useless. Though at this point it  will affect desktop version only, it will not have any impact on the mobile version of Facebook.

At the same time site’s administration is not providing much information which technology will be used to “block” blockers and it is clear why. According to The Wall Street Journal , developers will use a new format of the ads, that will be out of the range of existing algorithms that ad blockers are using. Blocking apps will simply not see or recognise Facebook advertisements. Also mentioned that they are not paying anything to ad blockers developers to add Facebook ads to white-lists.

Regarding new advertising possibilities, Facebook says that there will be new tools to control what kind of advertisement user will see by changing list of advertisers that are allowed to display their ads to user. New list of interest will be implemented.

As per Facebook, an annoying advertisement is one of the industry’s biggest problems, and it should be resolved not by blocking, but in different way. Ads should be well done and useful for the viewer.

While all this is not implemented yet, let’s look at good old ways coping with annoying advertisements:

AdBlock Plus (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, IE)

Desktop app, block most ads, as well as the option to filter malware and social media buttons.

AdBlock (Chrome, Opera, Safari)

Desktop app uses a series of filter lists to block automatically ad content coming from known ad servers and providers. Users can stick with the default block lists, subscribe to additional ones, or even create their own, as well as whitelist their favorite websites.

AdBlock Plus Mobile (Android, iOS)

The mobile app makes sure to cover the mobile front with two different offerings for Android and iOS users.

1Blocker (iOS)

The mobile app, powerful and highly configurable content blocker that comes preloaded with a wide array of ad blocking settings available for iOS devices.