Opera’s Latest Update Makes The Browser Friendlier For Online Publishers Like Ourselves

Online publishing is a pretty cut-throat industry and many businesses in this field are still looking for a viable business model that justifies the effort that goes into making content. The Opera browser’s latest update is one of those conveniences that make it possible for publishers to make more money from their work. How exactly?

Whitelisting

Well, Opera 50 has a new whitelisting feature that allows users to remove ad-blockers and get more advertising revenue. One of the reasons why I don’t personally use adblockers is because they are too aggressive, Yes they block the irritating ads that are badly adopted on many websites but they go a step further and also block the ads that are on valuable and informative sites. That means if advertising is the main revenue stream for that business they are not getting their dues whenever I visit their site.

This is something I didn’t understand until I started working for an online publication and since then I make sure I stay away from adblockers. On the rare occasions that I do use adblockers, I make sure that I whitelist the sites I visit often and get value from. With that context, it makes sense to see why this move would be welcomed by publishers. In this new update, how then do you whitelist the sites that you allow to show you adverts? Well, the steps are pretty simple;

Open the Opera browser on your phone
Click the Opera button (O) in the bottom right corner
Click settings
Click on ‘Ad blocking’
Click on excluded sites
You can then add all the sites that you want to show ads (Hopefully starting with us)

Once you’ve done this the special sites you’ve excluded from the blocking list will be able to show you ads whilst the rest of the internet won’t be able to disrupt you.

That’s not all

The new update also comes with a PiP (Picture in Picture) mode that allows you to continue watching video content whilst you scroll. This is an underrated but extremely convenient feature and I got familiar with it using Netflix, Twitter and DStv Now.