Web sites with "good" advertising experiences will soon have the option to add a pop-up that asks ad-blocker users to either whitelist their site or pay a fee to continue viewing the page ad-free.
This was announced by Google this week, in a move to help publishers recover lost funds from ad-blockers.
"When people encounter annoying ads, and then decide to block all ads, it cuts off revenue for the sites you actually find useful," says Varun Chirravuri, Google product manager.
"Many of these people don't intend to defund the sites they love when they install an ad-blocker, but when they do, they block all ads on every site they visit."
The pop-up is part of Google's Funding Choices, which gives Web site owners the option to install it easily in Chrome.
Funding Choices was launched in June last year, and is available to publishers in the US, UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. From May, the option will be rolled out to more European countries, with more regions to follow later this year. .
However, Google says Funding Choices will only be available to Web sites that create good advertising experiences for viewers and adhere to a list of best practices.
Google says a good advertising experience is not obtrusive and does not have unexpected loud music playing, or force users to wait 10 seconds before proceeding to the page.
Publishers that are not sure if they qualify can check the Google Ad Experience Report and learn how to make better adverts. This site also gives examples of what annoying adverts look like and suggestions on how to fix them.
Funding Choices is still in beta, but Chirravuri says since launch millions of ad-blocking users every month are choosing to see ads on publisher Web sites, or whitelisting that site, after seeing a Funding Choices message.
"In fact, in the last month, over 4.5 million visitors who were asked to allow ads said yes, creating over 90 million additional paying page views for those sites."
Publishers have a choice of three different pop-ups to display when ad-blocker users visit their site. The first does not block any content from the visitor. It is a dismissible message that reminds the user they get revenue from ads and asks them to consider whitelisting the site or paying to view it ad-free.
The second option lets the visitor view the site using an ad-blocker for a set number of visits before they are forced to view the site with ads or pay not to.
The third blocks all ad-blocker users from viewing any content unless they have whitelisted the site or paid a fee to view it ad-free.
Chirravuri says: "On average, publishers using Funding Choices are seeing 16% of visitors allow ads on their sites with some seeing rates as high as 37%."
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