Find irony in what Sedo’s founder is doing now — You might
Schumacher went from the business of delivering ads to blocking them.
It’s been a few years since Tim Schumacher, co-founder of Sedo, left the firm.
You might be surprised to learn that, following creating one of the world’s largest domain parking ad firms, he’s now backing software that blocks internet users from seeing ads.
Schumacher is an investor in the firm behind Ad Block Plus, a browser plugin that blocks users from seeing most ads on a website.
Computer World just interviewed him regarding the firm and how he got involved. Although I’ve known regarding his involvement for a while, I didn’t realize he discovered the technology while he was at Sedo:
In 2009, when looking through our tracking of the advertising Sedo places on domains, I noticed that ad blockers were blocking the delivery of ads. I looked into that and saw this developer, Wladimir Palant, who had the largest ad blocker out there, and to my good luck he was in Cologne, where I was.
Ad Block Plus has been criticized for charging sizable publishers that want to be part of its acceptable ads program, which whitelists certain sites’ “unobtrusive” ads. Joining this program is free for smaller publishers, but it limits ads they show to basically text ads or static ads without “attention-grabbing images.” Thus, Ad Block Plus deprives many modest web publishers who make a living from ads from generating as much revenue as they otherwise would.
