An Update on Rewards in Pie Adblock
TL;DR: Rewards for Ads are moving out of Pie Adblock due to Google policy changes. Pie Adblock remains free and focused on building the best ad blocker available. If you want to keep earning cash back and rewards, install Pie Shopping.
What's changing
When we launched Pie Adblock, we set out to do something different: give people full control over their browsing experience, including the option to earn rewards by choosing to engage with ads. The combination of ad blocking and rewards was central to Pie Adblock from day one and approved by Google under it's single purpose policy for Chrome extensions. The purpose was simple: help you manage your advertising experience.
After Pie Adblock grew to over 2 million users (with a 4.9 star rating from over 25,000 people) Google changed its interpretation of its Chrome extension policies and decided that "ad blocking" and "ad insertion" would be considered multiple purposes under their policy, even when "ad management" was explicitly why users installed the extension and is a legitimate single purpose. We believe Google's narrowed interpretation of it's own policy, specifically for advertising, is anti-competitive and shared why we believe this is a problem here.
Unfortunately, the narrowed policy interpretation prevents us from offering meaningful Rewards for Ads going forward in the Pie Adblock extension.
We didn't give up easily. For months, we have self-funded rewards to see if we could make the economics work with Google's new constraints. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a viable path forward. The challenges were compounded by our global user base with users sometimes only able to earn pennies per month. That's not the experience we want to deliver.
What's not changing
If you use Pie Adblock because you love the ad blocking experience, nothing changes for you. We're doubling down on what we do best:
- Pie Adblock is free. How do we make money? Great question - we're still trying to figure that out. Perhaps from new services we suggest to some of you at some point.
- Your points are still yours: You won't lose any points you've earned from Pie Adblock and you can continue to earn more with Pie Shopping.
- YouTube and Twitch: We'll keep doing out best to keep up with frequent platform changes.
- Privacy protections: We'll never sell your data.
To be clear about how Pie Adblock has always worked:
- We never replaced existing publisher ads: We created entirely new, optional opportunities for users to earn rewards engaging with advertiser offers.
- We helped publishers earn more by encouraging users to opt in with rewards.
- We remain committed to helping creators (especially on YouTube and Twitch) by giving users the best tools to whitelist and support their favorite channels. This remains a popular feature.
Pie Adblock remains completely free, and we're continuing to invest in making it the best ad blocker on the internet.
Where rewards live now
Rewards are moving to Pie Shopping. Google takes a broader view of what features "shopping tools" can offer, which is why cash back and coupon extensions have always been able to provide rewards on Chrome in a single extension.
With Pie Shopping, you can still:
- Earn cash back at thousands of stores (you get 100% of the commissions earned)
- Get automatic coupons applied at checkout
- Chat with our AI shopping assistant for personalized recommendations
- Discover the best deals based on what you're actually looking for
If you've been earning rewards with Pie Adblock and want to keep going, just install Pie Shopping alongside your ad blocker. The two extensions work great together where most other ad blockers prevent cash back (from Pie or other programs) from working.
A new chapter
This isn't the end of our mission, it's an evolution. We'll keep building toward a future where people have more control, more transparency, and more value from their time online.
Thank you for being part of this journey. We're grateful for your support and excited about what's coming next.