Yahoo has fired the latest arrow in the adblocking wars, admitting that it is trialling barring users from their email accounts unless they disable adblocking software.
When some users tried to log into their accounts, they were presented with a warning that read: “Uh oh . . . We are unable to display Yahoo Mail. Please disable adblocker to continue using Yahoo Mail.”
In a statement, Yahoo said it is testing out the new approach on “a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the US”.
“At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences,” spokeswoman Anne Yeh was quoted as saying in The Financial Times.
The adblocking fight back provoked some unfavourable responses from users on social media.
The move is a potentially risky one for the company that has already seen profits fall by 45% since 2012 to their lowest level in a decade.
The Financial Times reported the platform was recently ranked sixth by advertisers according to return on investment, behind Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. Part of the problem is that it does not allow such specific audience targeting as its competitors.
Estimates of the cost of adblocking in terms of lost revenue range from $22 billion to $1 billion in 2015. PageFair and Adobe say more than 200 million people use adblocking software worldwide - double the number two years ago.
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