Quite a few years ago, when I was installing an ad-blocker for my browser, I was thinking that advertisers must be losing a lot of money because of this relatively simple extension. It seems that my assumption was correct because ad-blockers might end up costing as much as $21.8 billion globally in lost advertising revenue, and that’s just for 2015. These numbers come from a study conducted by Adobe and PageFair named “The cost of ad blocking”. The study suggests that almost 200 million monthly internet users are using ad-blocking extensions, and it looks like the sites that are the most affected by the blocks are those who target “young, technically savvy, or more male audiences.”
When it comes to regional specifics, Europe leads the ad-blocking charge with 77 million monthly users, while the US is quite a bit behind at 45 million. In Europe, Greece has the highest rate of ad-block usage, as 36.7% of its internet users are using these extensions. Even though ads are currently being stopped mostly on desktops and laptops, they are slowly being blocked on mobile devices as well, especially in Asia. As Apple is looking to provide ad blocking support with its Safari mobile browser for iOS9, this trend is likely to increase fast.
The co-founder and chief executive of PageFair, Sean Blanchfield, stated the following:
“It is tragic that ad block users are inadvertently inflicting multi-billion dollar losses on the very websites they most enjoy. With ad blocking going mobile, there’s an eminent threat that the business model that has supported the open web for two decades is going to collapse.”
Thank you TechSpot for providing us with this information.
Well then maybe the ads should not be obnoxious noisy and something im not in the slightest bit interested in.
I use AdBlocker because i do not want adverts all over what ever page im browsing, and i definitely do not want ads on my facebook page, they are the worst and most inappropriate ads ever. Im not interested nor do i need penis enhancements, im not looking for “singles in my area” so i do not want a thousand of these kind of ads all over my page when im trying to browse the web.
I add exceptions to my list for youtubers i want to support, who make their living from the ads in/on/around their videos, but i could not care less if facebook is losing money on ads im not seeing, or if some random website that i visit is not getting that ad revenue from me.
pretty much as Jonas said I make exceptions for Youtubers and sites that exercise some common sense when it comes to ads all I’m asking them to do is :-
1) Have the ads for products relevant to what your channel/site covers ( If I’m on a computer tech channel then I’m there for computer Tech stuff not frigging dollar shave clubs bulk razor discount scheme cough Linus)
2)Ads must not be obnoxious or overdone (once at the beginning and end of the video is quite enough and tbh 1 time too many).
Any website/Youtube channel gets one chance to follow these simple requirements and if they don’t then on goes the adblock.
I turned off adblock and went on a Youtube spree yesterday.
I saw no less than 100 ads in the space of 3 hours.
One podcast i watched was 1 hour long, and in the space of that hour the video was stopped 4 times and an advert from youtube played this advert was nothing at all to do with the content i was watching (gaming podcast) that does not even mention the 10 adverts sitting around the video in the side portion of my screen.
There are to many obnoxious ads, that are 5 times the volume of the video you are watching, just like on TV, and one of the main reasons i do not own a TV licence and do not watch live TV, i could not care less for the BS they are selling, and even if i did care, i do not need the adverts to be pushed at me. I am capable of searching on google for things i might want, i do not need things i dont want pushed at me.
I am happy to support people worthy of supporting (eteknix site being one i dont mind not blocking ads on) but beyond that, its not my or your problem that they are loosing advertising money.
What annoys me here is the accusation that it’s our fault that people are losing advertising revenue on the web. If you pull back and look at it objectively no other form of advertising requires any feedback. Adverts on TV? Paid for. Billboards? Paid for. Annoying banner on your website? Well you’ll only get money if people click on it! They’ve skewed the entire transaction; you sell space to advertisers and they get coverage. That’s how it has always worked traditionally. I don’t see an advert at a bus stop and have to press a button before the bus company get anything for displaying it. Maybe they should go back and analyse how their business model works.
Yeah how dare we install ad blockers so we don’t have to have our browsing experience interrupted by the latest Pyramid Scheme scam or useless tech we will never buy.
Did I agree to see these adverts when I signed up with my ISP? Nope.
Cry me a river businesses.
Here’s why ad-blockers are getting more common and it’s nothing to do with obnoxious adverts (which is part of the reason). Malvertising is on the increase with top domains getting compromised leading to innocent people getting their computers getting taken over through Zero Days. This is becoming so prevalent that many security experts are now recommending you actually install a blocker or your hosts file as part of your on-line protection now.
Google, Yahoo and many other networks have all distributed malicious adverts in the last few years.
Another reason, a comparison of sites viewed with and without adverts lead to savings of over 50% page load times and reduce the bandwidth consumption. For the mobile market the bandwidth is often capped. For instance you have a background image that’s 220kb (Asus advert for Skylake) on Eteknix.