It’s increasingly likely that a visitor to your web site will be running ad blocking software and it is a problem that site operators are going to have to learn to deal with as ad blocking becomes ever more popular. It’s no longer something that’s restricted to the tech savvy users, plus with Apple now allowing ad blockers on iPhone and iPad many mobile sites will be impacted too.

We wanted to find out more about how many people were using ad blockers, their reasoning behind it and what it could mean for web site owners, so in September 2015 we questioned over 2,500 people about ad blocking with an online survey. Here’s what we found: 

Many people are blocking ads

64% of all respondents to our survey are using some kind of ad blocking software. That’s already a huge number of web users who aren’t seeing advertisements and there’s no reason to believe that isn’t going to keep increasing.

Security is a big part of the reasoning behind ad blocking. 59% of those surveyed believe that ads pose a security threat, an impression that’s not been helped by some high profile “malvertising” attacks that have hit major sites and networks. Because of this ad blocking is becoming a standard part of a home computer security setup alongside anti-virus and firewalls.

We also asked the 36% who don’t use ad blockers why they don’t. 43% noted that they “don’t find it necessary”, 38% don’t know what an ad blocker is, 11% say it’s not supported while 4% don’t believe they’re ethical. There will always be a percentage of users without ad blocking set up, but it’s an ever-shrinking market.

Mobile ads

Of those people who do use ad blockers, 95% do so on a desktop or laptop computer while only 21% block ads on a tablet and 16% on a smartphone. So there may still be some avenues for mobile advertising, but it will need to be appropriate and minimally intrusive.

Another finding from our survey was that 43% find mobile ads more annoying than on a desktop/laptop environment. When asked why, 35% said it was because they were intrusive, 27% felt it slowed down web browsing and 18% were concerned about ads using more of their data allowance.

If sites don’t want to encourage greater take up of mobile ad blocking tools they will need to carefully consider how advertisements appear and make it a part of their overall mobile responsive design strategy.

Users don’t care

One very stark discovery from our survey was that most people are not bothered about the effects of ad blocking. In response to the question “are you concerned about the financial impact of ad blockers on businesses?”, 82% said no.

With many sites reliant upon the income from advertising the operators may need to come up with alternative solutions. Some can appeal to users to whitelist their site to allow ads through the block, but that’s a tactic which will only work for a small number and not every site has the kind of relationship with their visitors where it would make an appreciable difference. Bypassing blockers through increasingly complex technical means is one option but it will be a constant battle. Other sites have signed on to “acceptable ads” programs run by ad blocking software providers which permit simple ads to be displayed, but these are not available on every ad blocker and site owners may not want to pay for the right to advertise.

Could sites turn to other methods of funding such as subscriptions, paywalls or merchandise? We asked whether people would consider alternative funding methods in place of advertising and only 33% responded positively. While it’s not going to bring in the big bucks for many sites, a reasonable subscription program or attractive merchandising might work on a smaller scale for particular audiences and could go some way to offsetting the loss from ad blocking.

 

By Matt Powell, Editor for Broadband Genie. 

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