Publishers Spotlight Eyeo’s Ad Filtering Perception Problem

Last week, German ad-blocker Eyeo announced it wants to block your ads and serve them too. The company launched a demand-side platform Trestle, allowing ad-buyers to purchase inventory to reach people who use Eyeo's ad blockers to block ads. The DSP makes it easier for agencies to plug directly into the demand generated from Eyeo's Acceptable Ads program, which claims 225 million global, up from 150 million three years ago. But Eyeo has a perception problem. Players on the buy and sell-side view the tech vendor with some skepticism for its past behavior. “They are holding our sites to ransom so they can choose when to deliver advertising and then take a cut,” said one publishing executive, who spoke to Adweek on the condition of anonymity. "If this was a Police case, this would be called a shakedown. You can’t be an ad-blocker and then create an ad network. Pick a side.” Chief Subscriptions Officers Have a Critical Role to Play in Advertising Efforts Beyond binary ad blocking Eyeo is assuring the market that it’s moved beyond the binary block-or-not features—which contributed to the industry’s existential crisis in 2015, when ad blocking globally cost publishers nearly $22 billion a year, according to a PageFair report at the time—to ad filtering, where some people would be happy to be served ads that are lighter and less intrusive. These standards are defined by the Acceptable Ads independent committee, partly informed by user research. Last year, Eyeo generated $50 million in revenue through its Acceptable Ads program, charging clients like Google, Criteo and Taboola to reach its ad-blocking users. For users, advertisers and publishers, it’s a win, win, win.Adi Padhye, Eyeo Eyeo’s ad-block products “continue to improve,” said general manager of Eyeo’s Trestle Adi Padhye. “We give users the option to choose the experience, we give much more control and include more user involvement [in the ad standards criteria].” Padhye said there are more publishers on board with its Acceptable Ads program now than ever before, he wouldn’t say how much money those publishers have recouped thanks to Eyeo. “For users, advertisers and publishers, it’s a win, win, win," Padhye added. "These people were previously unreachable to advertisers.” Out of the Comscore top 100 publishers monetizing via ads, 63 of them use at least one ad-block monetization strategy. While 52 use ad recovery via the Acceptable Ads program, according to PageFair’s 2021 report, up from 49 in 2020. In Germany, a privacy-conscious region where the rate of ad blocking is one of the highest since blockers also prevent certain ad trackers, publishers have been embroiled in legal battles with Eyeo for years. A spokesperson from Axel Springer told Adweek that the launch of Trestle shows Eyeo “never really intended to protect users, neither from tracking nor from ads.” Instead, “Trestle proves that Eyeo makes a lot of money by first blocking online ads with AdblockPlus and afterward selling ads via their own DSP—including user-tracking.” Buy-side buy-in Trestle is in conversations with “almost all” the major ad holding companies for its U.S. launch to plug into the DSP, although it couldn’t share names. According to Padhye, one agency exec said it’s like finally being invited to a party they’ve never been able to go to. From my perspective, it is counter-intuitive to serve ads to people who don’t want to see them to begin with.Stevan Randjelovic, GroupM Currently, there are four ad agencies listed on Eyeo’s Acceptable Ads Committee: The Tombras Group, PartnerCentric, TLGG and ecommerce agency Visiture. “From my perspective, it is counter-intuitive to serve ads to people who don’t want to see them to begin with,” Stevan Randjelovic director, brand safety and digital risk, EMEA at GroupM told Adweek. That said, he noted that offering consumer opt-in adds another wrinkle to industry ad reinsertion solutions. The giant media-buying agency took a tough line on ad reinsertion solutions in 2016. And there’s a difference between conversations and working together. “When an agency launches a DSP RFI, there are hundreds and hundreds of questions,” said Randjelovic, citing factors like quality of supply, fraud protection, onboarding principles, brand safety, viewability and geography. Although with Trestle, advertisers can use verification services like DoubleVerify or Integral Ad Science. Other agency execs deem the Acceptable Ads program as controversial for publishers but note that engagement with Eyeo would be more client led. "As buyers, we can have an ethical view on how we wish to engage with our partners," said Azad Ali, head of performance Insights at Spark Foundry. "If a client is particularly keen to access a hard-to-reach audience, then we can still have the conversation to decide the best route forward." The non-addressable slice is growing Ultimately, ad-block rates are not as dire as they have been, spurring ad block companies to diversify revenue sources. Cross-industry initiatives like the Coalition for Better Ads are working to eliminate the very worst ad experiences and set universal standards, and it seems to be working: ad-block rates on desktop are decreasing, according to the CBA’s index. “The question is can Eyeo move into a position to be a trusted partner,” said Oliver von Wersch, a German-based independent digital consultant. And while that’s possible, so long as Eyeo's users don’t turn to other blocking products in frustration, it takes time for monetization vendors to become partners. Adhering to industry standards will help as well as sharing positive, big-name case studies and research. “If you want to be a part of the industry and partner on the buy-side via demand that you’re generating from ad blocking it makes sense to align with the industry standards,” he added. And as the ability to track audiences across the web only intensifies with Google axing third-party cookies in Chrome, for Eyeo, the competitive landscape for catering ways to monetize non-addressable audiences will only grow, (a selling point for Trestle is that agencies can onboard client first-party data to match and target users or create lookalike audiences). “I’m getting more publishers now asking me ‘what should we do about ad-block activated inventory?’” said von Wersch, adding that it makes sense to think of ad-block users in the context of cookies.

Publishing News

'Pick a Side': Skeptical Publishers Spotlight Eyeo’s Ad Filtering Perception Problem

The ad-blocking company's DSP launch has raised eyebrows

Lucinda Southern

Mark Stenberg

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Lucinda Southern

Mark Stenberg