Douglas de Jager Named CEO of eyeo, Leading a Strategic Re-Founding to Make Online Advertising Private by Design

2x Founder (acquired by Google & ZPG Plc) and cyber-security innovator to scale eyeo’s mission from browser-based ad filtering to infrastructure-level privacy protection for a billion people

BERLIN - July 28, 2025 - eyeo, the guardrail company for online advertising that created AdBlock and Adblock Plus, today announced the appointment of Dr. Douglas de Jager as CEO. De Jager, a serial entrepreneur known for founding cyber-security firm spider.io (acquired by Google), originally joined eyeo in late 2024 as CTO. He now replaces former CEO, Frank Einecke, to lead eyeo’s next chapter: scaling from browser extensions to infrastructure-level privacy protection.

“This is a re-founding,” said de Jager. “For fourteen years, we have been helping hundreds of millions of people reclaim their internet experience - while still incentivising creators to produce the content we all love. Going forward, we want to do more, for more people. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, and we believe that this should be built into everyone's internet experience by design.”

Under de Jager’s leadership, eyeo will be expanding its advertising guardrails from being just format-based to a focus on privacy. This means that eyeo will begin blocking third-party tracking, cookie-syncing and fingerprinting. At the same time, the company will give advertisers a way to measure the impact of their ads that is private by design. While continuing to invest in its profitable core, including Blockthrough, which helps publishers responsibly monetize ad-blocking users, eyeo will continue its expansion in recent years from desktop browser to any application on any device. To accelerate the cultural, structural and operational changes needed for this expansion, eyeo will be reducing the size of its team - with deep respect for those leaving and renewed commitment to those staying.

The demand is clear: A new eyeo-Harris Poll survey found that while 86% of U.S. adults are interested in taking steps to protect their personal information online from data breaches or cybersecurity incidents, including two in five (41%) who strongly agree, just over half (53%) admit they don’t know what steps to take. This gap between intent and action underscores the urgent need to protect our internet experiences in a way that is comprehensive, transparent and effortless.

De Jager’s track record reflects a deep commitment to user safety at scale. After founding spider.io and exposing the Chameleon botnet, he led Google’s war on ad-fraud malware, while also leading all traffic defenses for DoubleClick Bid Manager. He also co-founded BytePlay (acquired by ZPG Plc), the privacy-driven health research platform human.ai, and the infrastructure-first VC firm Programmable Ventures.

"Douglas brings together deep technical expertise, clear strategic vision, and an unwavering commitment to user trust," said Till Faida, founder and board member at eyeo. "We are strategically evolving our team structure, supported by a profitable core business, to focus on engineering. With growing market demand for ethical, privacy-safe identity and measurement solutions, eyeo is uniquely positioned to lead this space. We're entering our next phase with strong momentum - new partnerships with top Fortune 500 retailers, an expanded collaboration with the world’s largest e-commerce platform, and a 73 percent surge in subscriptions since January 2024.”

Survey Methodology:

The consumer survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of eyeo from June 3-5, 2025, among 2,081 adults ages 18 and older. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within +/- 2.5 percentage points using a 95% confidence level.

About eyeo:

eyeo is dedicated to empowering a balanced and sustainable online value exchange for users, browsers, advertisers, and publishers. By building, monetizing, and distributing ad-filtering technologies, eyeo creates solutions that allow all members of the online ecosystem to prosper. Its ad-filtering technology powers some of the largest ad blockers on the market, like Adblock Plus and AdBlock, and is distributed through partnerships to millions of devices. eyeo currently serves 350 million global ad-filtering users who consent to Acceptable Ads, an independently derived ad standard that determines whether an ad is acceptable and nonintrusive.

For more information, visit www.eyeo.com.