Category: Product

AAX Integrates With Amazon Publisher Services To Facilitate Easy Access To Industry Leading Ad-Block Monetization Solution

Posted on by AAX Team

AAX, the industry leader in permission-based monetization solutions for ad-blocked inventory, now enables media companies and content owners to integrate its solution directly from within the Amazon Publisher Services (APS) platform.

AAX works with ad-blocking companies to reach consumers who deploy ad blockers but who have opted-in to be shown ads they deem acceptable. Using AAX, publishers can monetize valuable audiences which previously represented lost revenue. This new incremental revenue source can now be unlocked in a few simple clicks in the APS Connection Marketplace.
“By embedding AAX into APS, customers don’t have to add additional code. They can generate substantial, incremental revenue by converting readers that used to cost them money into readers that make them money,” noted AAX’s CEO, Scott Schwanbeck.

The use of ad blockers remains on the rise as users become increasingly frustrated by intrusive ads, more aware of dubious data collection practices and more sophisticated in leveraging ad-blocking tools. AAX has developed a robust but easy-to-use solution that lets publishers fairly and honestly generate revenue for the content they create while at the same time putting users in control of the ads they see – a win-win in terms of mitigating negative browsing experiences.

“Our goal is to make our solution as easy to access as it can be and to build a bridge to users who see and feel the need to deploy ad blockers,” added Schwanbeck. “Our globally distributed team will continue to develop alliances around the world with key industry players like Amazon as part of our larger, overall mission of enabling publishers to use our tech however is most convenient, efficient, and effective for them.”

The AAX solution is fully live with-in the APS Connections Marketplace. For more information, please contact your APS Representative or reach out to us directly at: aaxmedia.dxdemos.online/contact-us.

AAX’s 2021 Roundup!

Posted on by AAX Team

Let’s be real: 2021 wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. If we’re going with water metaphors, it was more like a stormy ocean than a placid lake—ups and downs, swells and ebbs. There were times when we might have felt a little bit seasick.

But now, with the holidays upon us and the year in the rearview mirror, we can reflect on the ride we took throughout 2021.

Here at AAX, we think it’s important to end the year looking back even as we look forward, and to contemplate our past achievements even as we plan for the future.

In that spirit, here’s a roundup of some of the highlights from our year:

We Added To Our Team

The AAX team is a growing one, and one of our first additions this year was Euan Johnson, our Business Intelligence Manager.

We profiled Euan back in January, when he talked to us about the path that led him to Business Intelligence, the fascinating intricacy and possibility of mathematics, and whether there are strict limits to Business Intelligence or if it can stretch to encompass any number of exciting forms.

Check out our piece on Euan to learn more.

We Continued Studying Ad Blocking Users

You may have noticed that ad blocking users are an especially fascinating demographic—especially ad filterers, or the 95% of people who have ad blockers installed on their devices but consent to be served non-intrusive, respectful ads.

AAX continued our study of these educated, affluent, and highly-engaged users in our new study, “Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations.”

And we learned a lot. You’ll want to check out the entire study (available for free download) but some of the most salient points include:

• users concerns and fears surrounding privacy, battery life, and data allowance

• how the motivation for ad blocking has changed since 2017

• whether men and woman have different motivations for ad blocking…and why that matters

• the impact of the generational divide—how Boomers, Zoomers, and everyone in-between, feel about ad blocking

We Made Some Changes—Because Language Matters

We listened and we learned, and we noted that certain outdated and problematic terms needed to be abandoned. AAX announced that we will be using the terms “blocklist” and “allowlist” instead of any words associated with color-related imagery.

We believe, furthermore, that using “blocklist” and “allowlist” will enhance the clarity of our communication.

After all: a blocklist blocks and an allowlist allows. What could be simpler than that?

We Isolated The Top Three Motivations For Ad Blocking

It’s a question that challenges everyone affiliated with the ad space: why do ad blocking users block ads in the first place? What is it about ads that makes people uncomfortable?

Thanks to data gleaned by the ever-helpful GlobalWebIndex, we were able to isolate the three most important and pressing issues for ad blocking users: the trio of attributes that make ads undesirable.

Check out our findings!

And We Wished You A Happy New Year!

We at AAX hope you have a peaceful, stress-free end to 2021. You’ve earned it.

And, on the stroke of midnight on January 1, we look forward to making some noise, throwing some confetti, and ushering in a bright new 2022.

Beyond black and white: welcome to the new listings

Posted on by AAX Team

AAX is pleased to be revising our vocabulary. In the name of both a) dismantling harmful stereotypes and b) enhancing clarity, we’ll be replacing the term “whitelist” with “allowlist” and “blacklist” with “blocklist.”

These new naming practices reflect a change that’s been occurring industry-wide. The last year has seen a period of sorely-needed cultural consideration regarding racism and prejudice, and how best to dismantle and work against them.

And that includes grappling with terms like “whitelist” and “blacklist.”

When the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) changed their term usage last spring, they explained that:

[…] there’s an issue with the terminology. It only makes sense if you equate white with ‘good, permitted, safe’ and black with ‘bad, dangerous, forbidden’. There are some obvious problems with this. So in the name of helping to stamp out racism in cyber security, we will avoid this casually pejorative wording on our website in the future. (Source)

This issue—of racism embedded in the language we use, often without thinking—is well past due for a reckoning. In a recent piece for AdExchanger, Andrew Kraft harkened back to a famous 1971 interview where Muhammad Ali considered loaded terms that framed “white” as “good” and “black” negatively, writing:

[…] he recalled that all the positive things he grew up with were white, from White Cloud tissue paper to the White House, while all the negative things, from the bad luck of a black cat to the term blackmail, were black. Nearly 50 years later, that linguistic measuring stick is alive and well. (Source)

We think that it’s time to change our vocabulary.

There’s an additional benefit to this terminology change. Terms like “whitelist” and “blacklist,” while understood within the industry, can be confusing to newcomers to the ad space. Replacing these terms with the more explanatory “allowlist” and “blocklist” makes these words instantly accessible: an allowlist allows, and a blocklist…blocks. If doing away with outdated terminology helps us communicate more effectively and succinctly, we consider that to be a bonus.

Because the words we use matter. And AAX is committed to working against racism in all forms, including at the linguistic level.

What are Acceptable Ads? A crash course

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

The AAX team attended the Digiday Publishing Summit in Key Biscayne Florida with a particular mission: instead of talking about AAX, we wanted to take a step back and discuss the Acceptable Ads initiative.

But in order to get the full picture, and understand how ad blockers have, over the years, evolved into ad filterers, we need to start at the beginning.

How Did We Get Here?

What are the causes of ad blocking? If you ask an ad blocker, you’ll usually hear something along the lines of “There are too many ads.”

But when you dig deep, exploring the causes of these “too many ads,” you’ll find the culprit is a supply and demand imbalance that has long posed a challenge to premium publishers.

What happens in a marketplace when there’s a supply and demand imbalance is that the seller—in this case, the publisher—finds themselves in a weakened position. That means that the buyer, the advertiser, moves into a position of strength. This has lead to a squeeze on the publisher: the publisher has to serve more ads, bigger ads, and more intrusive ads.

It was exactly this dynamic that lead to a dramatic increase in ad blockers.

Ad blocking is the Biggest Boycott In Human History– Doc Searls

At a conference like Digiday Publishing, ad blocking is always the elephant in the room. And in this case it’s not just a question of standing out. It’s also a question of sheer size: the scope of ad blocking is massive.

  • One billion people worldwide use ad blockers.
  • In the USA, a publisher can expect 15-20% of their visitors to have an ad blocker.
  • In places like Germany and France, the percentage ad blocking visitors reaches 45%.

These numbers are astounding.

But there’s another number to consider: 90% of ad blockers users can receive ads.

Solutions To Ad Blocking and Benefits To Publishers

When an ad blocker is installed, the ad block user is given an option: to opt in and consent to be served acceptable ads. The fact that 90% choose this option speaks to the fact that ad block users don’t hate all ads—just the kind of invasive, flashy ads that prompted the mass boycott of ad blocking.

It also speaks to the particulars of the ad blocking demographic. These users are young, highly educated, tech savvy, and index high for consuming media online. In other words, they understand the balance of the ecosystem relies on advertising, and that a browsing experience can actually be augmented by the presence of respectful, non-intrusive ads—by the presence, in other words, of Acceptable Ads.

The criteria for what determines an Acceptable Ad is defined by the Acceptable Ads Committee, a fully independent third party committee made up of industry insiders, privacy organizations, users, consumers, publishers. The criteria is straightforward: an ad can be deemed Acceptable if it

  • is a static banner instead of an animated banner
  • there is no video present
  • the ads don’t represent more than 15% above the fold…
  • …or 25% below the fold

Ultimately, what the Acceptable Ads initiative—along with AAX, an ad exchange that serves only Acceptable Ads—is committed to is achieving is a balance between consumer experience, browsing experience, and content monetization.

AAX launches Blockmeter to show publishers how much they could be making from ad blockers in real time

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

Free tool allows publishers to measure their potential revenue lift from monetizing an untapped ad-blocking audience

New York, USA and Berlin, Germany – June 3, 2019 – AAX, the Acceptable Ads Exchange, today announced the launch of Blockmeter. Blockmeter is a free tool that enables publishers to measure the potential revenue lift they would generate from displaying Acceptable Ads to the segment of their audience that is using content-filtering software but willing to see less intrusive advertisements.

20% of all internet users have an ad blocker; of these, 90% agree to view certain non-invasive advertisements, namely Acceptable Ads. This is a tech-savvy, valuable demographic that represents a sizeable market share. Studies show that members of this demographic1:

  • are 80% more likely to make online purchases than non-ad-blocking users2;

  • are not against ads, because they believe in the rights of content creators and in the value exchange between users and content creators3;

  • generate 15% more page impressions than non-ad-blocking users4.

These valued users—who have an ad blocker installed and are opted in to the Acceptable Ads program—can be efficiently monetized by publishers who run Acceptable Ads as an additional revenue channel to their existing ones.


“We’ve launched Blockmeter to help publishers measure how much revenue they’d be leaving on the table by not monetizing their ad-blocking users, who are willing to see non-intrusive, respectful ads,” said Frederick Leuschner, CEO at AAX.


“The Acceptable Ads Exchange enables publishers to show consent-based advertising to their unique ad-blocking audience, thus helping them generate additional ad inventory that would otherwise remain untapped. Blockmeter is a simple way for publishers to see beforehand what their revenue lift might be, ” added Rotem Dar, Head of Commercialization at AAX.

Blockmeter is completely free to use for any publisher who wants to see how much more money they could be making from this valuable audience, no strings attached. To find out more about Blockmeter, please visit https://aaxmedia.dxdemos.online/blockmeter/. To express an interest in using the tool, please fill in the form at https://aaxmedia.dxdemos.online/try-blockmeter/.

About AAX

Acceptable Ads Exchange (AAX) is a programmatic marketplace that allows publishers, advertisers, and users to benefit from a healthy, respectful and human ecosystem. AAX is committed to a fair and profitable value exchange between user, marketer, and content provider.

By working with AAX, publishers are able to access and monetize over 150 million ad-filtering users with specially formatted ads consented to by those users and curated by an independent non-profit organization. For marketers it means the opportunity to target this precious user group which they otherwise have no access to.

Follow AAX on Twitter at @www.aax.media and read our updates at https://aaxmedia.dxdemos.online/news. For more information, please visit https://aaxmedia.dxdemos.online/about/.

* according to the Global Ad-Blocking Behavior report, the ad-blocking rate of websites with an audience aged 15-44 is between 20-32%

** Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2018

*** YouGov Adblock User Report

**** Mozilla Report


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AAX approved for TAG registry, signaling commitment to a better advertising ecosystem

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

New York City, April 25th 2019: The Acceptable Ads Exchange (AAX), is joining the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). Acceptable Ads Exchange (AAX) is now “verified by TAG,” and is approved for listing in the TAG Registry of known and trusted players in the digital advertising ecosystem.

TAG, which was formed in 2015 by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), is a cross-industry accountability program, established to promote transparency and fight against fraudulent traffic, malware, and internet piracy across the online advertising vertical.

TAG-registered companies have been verified as legitimate participants in the digital advertising industry through a proprietary background check and review process. Additionally, they receive a TAG-ID, a unique identifier which enables them to identify themselves as registrars in the TAG registry, augmenting their standing and reputation.

“AAX understands that credibility and trust are essential for maintaining a secure, efficient, and sustainable online advertising ecosystem,” said Frederick Leuschner, AAX’s CEO. “Our TAG membership will provide our customers with further assurance that they are working with a reliable and trustworthy partner. At AAX, we will continue to strive to enhance our brand safety and fraud protection measures, and TAG’s membership is an important milestone for us.”

About AAX

The Acceptable Ads Exchange (AAX) allows publishers, advertisers and users to benefit from a healthy, respectful and human adtech ecosystem. It is a programmatic marketplace that acts as a bridge between the needs of the publisher, the marketer and the wishes of the user, and provide publishers and advertisers a unique access to a segment of young, highly educated and high-income visitors.

Start working with AAX

For more information, please contact:

Amir MILLO GROSS, Business Operations Manager
amir@www.aax.media