Yahoo confirms anti-ad blocking trial
Yahoo has confirmed that it is experimenting with anti-ad blocking software on a number of its Yahoo Mail users' accounts in an attempt to neutralize arguably the biggest threat to the online publishing industry.
Under the terms of the experiment, the system locks out Yahoo Mail account holders when it detects they are using an ad blocker, and then requests that they disable the ad blocker. The story first emerged when when a number of US-based Yahoo Mail account holders posted reports on the Adblock Plus user forum.
Yahoo has since confirmed with media outlets that it is experimenting with the technology, adding that it is experimenting with the service in the US, although it refrained from commenting further.
Despite ad blocking software having been around for year, ad blocking became one of the key issues facing the industry this year after an update to Apple's iOS operating system enabled the ability to block advertisements, both in app and on their mobile browsers.
This has given rise to the launch of several ad blocking outfits such as Sourcepoint, and Fairpage, with several publishers beginning to experiment with tackling the rising issue of users installing ad blocking software, with research from the IAB suggesting that as much as 15 per cent of Britons are now using such software.
Tactics on how to nullify the threat posed by ad blocking have varied from attempts to educate users that serving ads keeps content free at the point of consumption - one favored by The Guardian - to simply blocking all content that appears on a page when a homepage detects a user has an ad blocker installed.