According to reports from German news site Horizont, Google and other companies are paying the makers of AdBlock Plus to add their content to the app’s list of ‘acceptable ads’.
AdBlock Plus, the single most popular browser extension for both Firefox and Chrome, is a free application that users install to remove advertising from their web experience. Despite this, the company has always been open about its ‘whitelisting’ of certain content.
The makers define advertisements they consider acceptable as those which are static (ie, without animation or sounds), that do not obscure page content, are clearly marked as advertising and that are preferably text-only…
However, if AdBlock didn’t work with companies in some way then brands would almost certainly take action against them. So it seems that having at least some standards – ie, AdBlock’s criteria of what makes an ‘acceptable advertisement’ – is preferable to having no standards at all.
Sounds like “Do no harm” is one of those standards that been sufficiently watered down to have become no standard at all. Adblock is free. I might be interested in an app that actually blocked all adverts. It is what I do with TV ads, after all, with the 30-second skip feature on my DVR.
Eideard 
Just took a look at ABP’s “Filter Preferences” in the Firefox add-on. It has a user optional check box labeled “Allow some non-intrusive advertising”. From the description in this story, I’m guessing that at least some of the permitted “non-intrusive” advertising is what is at issue. The default setting seems to be to have the box checked — but it is a user option to uncheck it. There is also a link to “View list” of the ad sites that are permitted That doesn’t disturb me, though I think it would be a good thing if the producers of ABP disclosed any payments they are receiving from advertisers, or that they do receive some payments from advertisers. On the other hand, I usually extend a bit more tolerance toward producers of software that basically functions as promoted and is distributed free — I understand that they probably have a revenue model that I don’t fully appreciate, but life is too short to figure everything out.