Ad blocking is common practice in the digital realm because there’s a growing number of website visitors who simply do not want to be bombarded with lots of advertising banners each time they visit one of their favorite websites.
What are ad blockers, anyway?
Basically, they’re applications such as plug-ins or browser extensions that prohibit, remove or alter ads on a webpage. You see these popping up when you open a site, and instead of a pop-up ad, you get a pop-up message stating that an ad has been blocked, or broken links, or simply a blank space where an ad would normally be.
Here Are Some Quick Facts About Ad Blockers:
As stated before, more and more consumers are using ad blockers to block ads, both on desktop and mobile, continuing the strong growth rates seen during 2013 and 2014.
- Globally, the number of people using ad blocking software grew by 41% year over year.
- 16% of the US online population blocked ads during Q2 2015.
- Ad block usage in the United States grew 48% during the past year, increasing to 45 million monthly active users (MAUs) during Q2 2015.
- Ad block usage in Europe grew by 35% during the past year, increasing to 77 million monthly active users during Q2 2015.
- The estimated loss of global revenue due to blocked advertising during 2015 was $21.8B.
- With the ability to block ads becoming an option with the release of iOS 9, mobile is starting to get into the ad blocking game. Currently Firefox and Chrome lead the mobile space with 93% share of mobile ad blocking.
Below are some sample statistics according to a combined global report on ad blocking by Page Fair and Adobe published in 2015. The report dives into geographic detail, providing per-country and per-state information on ad block usage rates, monthly active user counts, as well as estimates of the total cost to publishers in many regions.
The report shows that not only has ad blocking continued its fast growth on desktop, but it has also leaped onto mobile in Asia, and will soon go mobile in the West with the launch of content blocking on iOS.
To download the full report, Click Here >
This is just one more reason why we always recommend to our clients to commit to a multi-channel marketing approach. By not relying on a handful of advertising channels, but rather focusing on your brand and diversifying your marketing over a wide variety of channels you will always be covered against headwinds and damaging marketing trends.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR)
Source: Adobe & PageFair
