Adblock Plus invites public to help train its Sentinel AI to dump Facebook ads
Adblock Plus is embracing image recognition and artificial intelligence to better identify bad ads online, especially Facebook's.
Adblock Plus unveils AI adblocker
The Eyeo-owned company has rolled out its Sentinel detector in beta and is inviting web users to try it out and submit screenshots of bad ads to help train the neural network.
The current slew of adblockers are currently dependent upon accessing a white list to identify which inventory should and shouldn't be blocked. They scan the code make up of each page to identify the telling signs of advertising. Sentinel on the other hand will be trained to identify and block ads that are circumventing this rudimentary system.
In particular, the company is urging Facebook users to submit the ads they are receiving. It said: “Sentinel will learn to block Facebook ads first, and will then learn to recognise other ad types.”
It comes as no surprise with the firms in the past escalating their ads (and adblocking) in direct conflict. Sentinel will look to identify the “aggressive” ways in which sites manage to display ads by working around ad blockers.
Till Faida, chief executive and co-founder of Eyeo, said: “This is the future of ad blocking. Facebook and others are getting clever at disguising ads from ad blockers and using circumvention techniques to show you ads anyway.
“We’ve always been able to develop workarounds to these circumvention techniques, but this cat-and-mouse game will likely continue for the foreseeable future. While only at its earliest stage right now, our Sentinel offers the framework of a long-term solution to the rise of anti-user ‘circumventionists’; and could have implications for viewability and ad detection within the ads industry as well.”
Faida concluded: “In order to train the neural networks to spot Facebook ads perfectly, we need to show it lots of examples, so start sending those screenshots today and tell your friends to do the same.”