Millions of people use ad blockers to eliminate advertisements from their browsing experience. Many publishers and online services have adapted and some now require users to turn off ad blockers before they can access content. Facebook, which makes the bulk of its revenues from advertisements, will soon start bypassing ad blockers meaning that even if you have one switched on, you’re still going to see ads on Facebook.
Facebook said today that it’s going to change the way ads are loaded on the desktop website so that they’re more difficult to detect for ad blockers.
“Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they’re not a tack on,” said Andrew Bosworth, the vice president of engineering for ads and pages at the social network.
Bosworth agrees that forcing ads on people who have specifically opted to block them is likely to irritate those users but he mentions that Facebook has invested a lot of resources to ensure that ads on the social network are relevant and “uninterruptive.” Facebook will also be introducing new controls for users to tweak the type of ads they are shown.
He also pointed out that Facebook has never paid any ad blocking company in the past to have its ads slip through the cracks and that’s something it’s not open to even in the future. “It’s not a business model that’s set out to serve the best interests of people,” he said.
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