Google along with Amazon & Microsoft reportedly paying AdBlock to unblock ads

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVYtzF5SemU]

Google along with other tech companies including Amazon, Microsoft, and Taboola, have reportedly reached a deal with AdBlock Plus to prevent the service from blocking ads on their websites. Financial Times reports:

The deals, which are confidential but whose existence has been confirmed by the Financial Times, demonstrate that some of the biggest participants in the $120bn online advertising market see the rise of ad-blocking as a material threat to their revenues.

AdBlock is one of the most popular solutions for blocking ads online and available to anyone through extensions added to web browsers like Chrome and Firefox. The service reportedly has approximately 50 million month active users.

Eyeo, the company behind AdBlock, offers a “whitelist” service allowing some approved ads to appear for AdBlock users. FT notes that the service is free for smaller sites, but for Google and others it costs an undisclosed fee. The report quotes one media company as saying “Eyeo had asked for a fee equivalent to 30 per cent of the additional ad revenues that it would make from being unblocked.”

The deal should mean that AdBlock users will start to see advertising on Google sites and properties owned by the other tech companies that have reportedly struck a deal with with Eyeo.