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Search ads and self-promotion

Disclosure. While AdGuard provides an option to show some ads, we do not have any 'acceptable ads' program like Adblock Plus and some other ad blockers, where they take money for leaving certain ads unblocked. This isn't our way of doing business. We do not get paid for showing any of the ads, and we do not use the term 'acceptable' for a reason: the ads we might show may be, in fact, useful and not just 'acceptable'. All of this applies only to search ads and self-promotion ads.

You can turn off the display of these ads at any time. Furthermore, we will explain which ads qualify for this definition.

Search ads​

Search ads are ads that you see among search query results when using online search engines, such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.

Search ads

These ads are always contextual: they are targeted to match the keywords you used in the query. This helps you find exactly what you are searching for. Moreover, search ads (because they go through manual moderation) are often more relevant and helpful than the rest of the search results.

Another argument in defense of search ads is that they are much less intrusive than many other ad formats.

What is websites' self-promotion?​

In principle, when an ad on a website promotes this particular website or closely related websites, social media, and so on, such an ad is considered a self-promoting one.

Search ads

Our general stance here is very similar to the EasyList policy regarding self-promotion ads. According to our filter policy, we should not block these ads; however, we should not make an exception if such an ad gets blocked by some rule 'alongside' a regular ad.

Partly, this is due to ethical reasons, but mostly because such ads are rarely too intrusive and are often useful for the visitor of the website (who is supposedly interested in this website's content).

By enabling 'Search ads and self-promotion', AdGuard users can unblock some of these self-promotion ads.

What ads are on the list?​

When you enable 'Search ads and self-promotion', search ads from the following search engines are shown:

  • Google
  • Yahoo
  • Bing
  • Ask
  • Yandex
  • DuckDuckGo
  • StartPage

As well as all self-promotional ads that satisfy our filter policy.

Summary​

Allowing 'Search ads and self-promotion' is a 100% optional feature that may be helpful in some cases. If you don't like it, you can turn it off at any time. It does not, and never will, include any ad types or individual ads that do not fall into one of the two categories described above.