Tag: Ad Blockers

Marketing Firm Study Suggests We’ve Reached Peak Ad Blocking

Marketing firm Audience Project says its study of 14,000 survey respondents in the US, UK, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland suggests we may have reached peak ad blocking.

However, when looking at how many are using ad blockers, we also see that these numbers are decreasing. From 2016 to 2020, the share of the online population using ad blockers has decreased across all countries. Today, less than one-third in the Nordics are using ad blockers, while Germany – with close to half of the online population (48%) using ad blockers – is the country where ad blocking is most widespread. In the US and UK, 41% and 36% are using ad blockers, respectively.

In the United States, for example, Audience Project reports that its 2016 survey found 52 percent of respondents used an ad blocker, compared to 41 percent in its 2020 survey.

Oddly, the Audience Project suggests that one of the main problems is lack of ad relevance,

Ad blocking users are primarily using ad blockers to get cleaner websites, and secondly to avoid irrelevant ads. In most countries, around half of the ad blocking users turn on their ad blockers to avoid irrelevant ads, while this is the case for two-thirds among the Finns.

This is odd because generally, to get “relevant” ads, companies use privacy invading technologies to track users across the Internet, which (at least anecdotally) many users seem to find creepy and potentially exploitative as well.

Which is also why you want to block them. Yes, ads are an aesthetic distraction while browsing the web, and you won’t miss them when they are not there. But more importantly, ads are significant privacy and security threats.

We block ads at the router in my house and have uBlock Origin and similar ad blockers installed wherever possible.

Friends don’t let friends see Internet ads.

AdNauseum–Ad Blocking With A Twist

AdNauseum is a free, Google Chrome extension that the company banned from the Chrome Web Store in 2017.

The extension hides ads, like any number of ad blockers, but twists the knife by automatically clicking on any ads it finds.  The intent is to render user targeting via ad surveillance pointless by flooding the ad surveillance software with false positives.

Two of the creators of the AdNauseum extension have written up an academic analysis of their project here.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s Delusional View of Advertising and Ad Blockers

The Guardian interviewed AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, and while his view on ad blockers is a lot more forward thinking than others in similar positions, he seems to have drunk the kool aid when it comes to advertising itself (emphasis added),

“Adblocking is the clearest signal for consumers that the advertising innovation cycle, that I think the entire industry got lazy on, needs to improve dramatically,” he says. “At our company, the adblocking rates have spurred a level of thinking that should have been around a couple of years ago.

“We have accepted the fact emotionally that adblocking is a signal from consumers that as great as we think all internet advertising is, it can be a lot greater. The consumer blocking of advertising is a very significant opportunity, and it is a significant risk if you choose to ignore it.”

Does anyone–other than the companies dependent upon it–think that the problem with online advertising is that it is merely great, and could be so much greater?

In the best case scenarios, advertising in all of its forms is at best a necessary evil that is tolerated and rarely celebrated. I am willing to tolerate ads during live TV broadcasts of NFL games, for example, though most of the time I switch to other activities when the ads play.

But there is never going to be a time when I am on my mobile phone or laptop thinking, “man, that was a great ad. I’m glad that site interrupted my workflow to show me such a great ad.”