Firefox Adblock Plus

That movement you just felt was the idea that the 300 to 400 thousand people monthly downloading what is quickly becoming one of the more controversial Firefox plugins. It is not controversial because it does something evil, bad, compromising or generally bad. What it does is clean up a web page and blanks out all the advertising on those pages.

In some ways this is good, it gets rid of all the junky clutter on a web page with the horrifying screaming ads, talking ads, and other things that can distract an entire office when surfing on your lunch break. The idea that it is being downloaded as much as it is says there is a want for this puppy. Its popular because it works, and it is popular because advertising has become a nightmare on some sites where you can no longer tell the content from the advertising. Go to any web site with this thing on, and you get the content, without the annoyance.

The bad part is as rough type and the NYTimes states, this is going to hit someone right in the wallet, and that is anyone who uses and sells advertising. While this will primarily influence Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, the majors, it will also influence Adbrite, AdEngage an a pile of smaller folks who are doing what they can to make money.

But here is why it is not a bad thing, even though all our sites use advertising as a way to defray costs.

Someone is going to come up with a way around this puppy. Not that this is a bad thing, but in the continuing arms race between people who want to do a thing, and people who do not want that thing done. Once someone figures out a way around Adblock, the natural response is Adblock figuring a way around the block.

People will still put ads on their sites, and people will still click on ads, that is not going to go away any time soon. Ad blocking systems have been around for a while, so the concept is nothing new, and the advertising business has done nothing but grow on the internet.

The Firefox plug in might just be the best thing that happened to on line advertising. It will mean that the bar has to be raised on the quality of advertising, advertorials might become the new thing, advertising is content and content as advertising. Make the whole thing indistinguishable an you have user generated content in a nut shell.

Then you have web 2.0, ala Madison avenue.