Facebook's bypass of ad-blockers sees ad revenues grow 18%
Facebook’s desktop ad revenue has grown by 18% compared to this time last year, and the company said that bypassing ad-blockers was the core reason for the profit increase. The social media giant has been making efforts to reduce the impact of ad-blocking by making it more difficult for ad-blocking software to distinguish between regular posts and ads. Although 85% of the company’s revenue is made on mobile, desktop still generated over a billion dollars in the last quarter.

Facebook has seen its desktop ad revenue grow by 18% compared to this time last year, and has said that bypassing ad blockers is...

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.