Facebook Ad Blocker Blocking Sees Ad Revenue Jump 18%

Facebook has seen its desktop ad revenue grow by 18% compared to this time last year, and has said that bypassing ad blockers is the root reason for the increase in profits.

“On ad blocking, in terms of the impact I would just point out that this quarter we had 18 percent year-over-year desktop revenue growth. If you look at recent quarters, it was about half of that growth rate on a year-over-year basis. So, that increment, that acceleration in desktop revenue growth is largely due to our efforts on reducing the impact of ad blocking. So, that’s what led to the acceleration of desktop revenue growth.” said Facebook CFO, David Wehner.

Facebook currently makes around 85% of its revenue via mobile devices, but its use on desktop still managed to pull in an impressive billion dollars plus in the last quarter.

As we here at FileHippo reported back in August, Facebook went to some lengths to stop users with ad-blocking software from not displaying ads, making it tougher for ad-blocking software  such as AdBlock, to distinguish between ordinary posts, status updates and ads. The move showed just how seriously Facebook was and is  taking the rise of ad-blocking software, and also just  how fiercely it will fight s to protect its income streams.

Facebook of course doesn’t exactly struggle when it comes to making money from advertising. Between itself  and Google, the two companies control  an astonishing 64% of online digital advertising.

AdBlock Plus succeeded in initially circumventing the ban by Facebook, but Mark Zuckerberg’s social media titan quickly put paid to that bypassing, and has since managed to keep the ads flowing freely through people’s pages.

The position of Facebook is that advertising is how the company makes money, and that the ads themselves are unobtrusive and it is how they can offer the service for free. Critics, on the other hand argue that Facebook ads are still a distraction, and that ad blockers help people from being tracked on-line and alleviate privacy concerns.