Eyeo GmbH, the German tech company that owns the popular ad blocker Adblock Plus, has navigated a tricky course as the world’s largest ad blocker and, more recently, as an advertising platform in its own right.
For years, ad blocking was an uncomfortable topic in digital media and advertising. Nowadays, online ad platforms and mobile companies are baking privacy and ad-filtering options into their own services.
Adblock Plus doesn’t aim to block advertising, only “annoying ads,” says co-founder Till Faida. And more and more, tech and media companies that were antagonistic to ad blocking are on board with an ad network and SSP-like platform with access to its hard-to-reach audience.
With a remote workforce and a surge of usage among online users, eyeo is forging new deals with browser operators and mobile device manufacturers, which offer opportunities to add huge pools of new users instead of earning app downloads one by one.
