Tim Peterson says, “Facebook cares about consumer choice until that choice conflicts with its business.

On the one hand, Facebook doesn’t want people feeling super creeped out when they use its site or apps, so now it’s giving them a new way to control what data brands can use to target them with ads. But on the other hand it wants to ensure it makes money from the people who use its site or apps for free, so it’s not going to let them use it without seeing ads.

On Tuesday Facebook announced that it’s come up with a way to thwart ad blockers and show ads to people who visit its desktop sites with ad blockers enabled. Even though Facebook’s ad business is 84% mobile at this point, it still made $998.2 million from desktop ads in the second quarter of 2016, so today’s move is as much about protecting its money as supporting the wider digital media industry’s fight against ad blocking.

Facebook could have circumvented people blocking ads on its site by paying ad blocker providers to not block their ads, like Google does. But it’s not. Facebook has never paid ad blockers to whitelist its ads and isn’t doing so now, according to a Facebook spokeswoman. Instead it’s taking on the ad blockers directly, at least on desktop”.

Facebook is blocking ad blockers on desktop, but not on mobile

Marketing Land

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