Adblock Plus Chief Till Faida Says Consumers Are Fed Up With Current Online Ads

Adblock Plus Chief Till Faida. Photo: Getty Images

Toll-booth collectors. Highway robbers. Little pissants. These are just some of the choice words members of the Web publishing community have for companies that make “ad blockers,” software that scrubs websites of advertising.

But Till Faida, chief of Adblock Plus, says that ad blocking is here to stay, since consumers these days are tired of pesky ads slowing down their Web pages and tracking them across the Internet. Mr. Faida, whose service boasts 100 million active users, joined The Wall Street Journal for the second episode of the WSJ Media Mix podcast.

“Consumers are speaking loudly that they are fed up with the current system of how online advertising works, and they are seeking out better alternatives,” Mr. Faida said. “It sounds scary to some publishers at first, but I think there’s a huge opportunity in this to win consumers back.”

Mr. Faida’s firm has faced fierce criticism in the industry, since its “acceptable ads” policy lets ads from hundreds of companies pass through its filters provided they aren’t too disruptive. Some 70 of those companies, like Google, Microsoft MSFT 1.47 % and Taboola, pay Adblock Plus parent Eyeo to be included in “acceptable ads.”

Recently, Adblock Plus announced a new program along with content-funding startup Flattr to let consumers pay websites directly for content (while taking a cut, of course). Mr. Faida says the goal is to have 10 million subscribers paying $5 per month on average by the end of next year, meaning Adblock Plus can send about half a billion dollars in revenue to publishers.

That’s a lofty goal. And it’s still an open question whether publishers will want to cooperate with a service many see as the enemy.

Check out the full conversation and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play Music, Stitcher or Spotify.

Write to Steven Perlberg at [email protected]