As you likely are well aware of, Ads can be obtrusive at times but they are a necessary evil. Not only for Google, seeing as 90% of their revenue comes from ads, (it’s likely even more than that actually) but for websites like Android Headlines and your favorite YouTubers, this is how they put food on the table, and a roof over their families head. There are plenty of annoying ads, like those auto-playing videos, and as Larry Page has been quoted saying, ads need to be done better, and to be less intrusive. However, they are necessary. Without ads, many of your favorite websites and YouTube stars wouldn’t be around.
Page Fair along with Adobe, have just released the 2015 report on Ad Blocking. This report shows us how big of an impact these ad blockers really make on the world. One of the key statistics here is that 198 million users around the world are using an Ad Blocker. A few other interesting statistics include $22 billion will be lost in 2015 due to ad blockers blocking ads. Ad blocking also grew 41% in the past 12 months, worldwide. In the US, the rise was about 48%, while the UK rose 82%.
In their ad blocking report, Page Fair also has a pretty interesting graph, showing the affect of ad blocking on each industry. With the gaming industry being affected the most, followed by Social Media and Tech/Internet filling out the top 3. Ironically, it affects government websites the least. That’s likely because they don’t normally have ads on government websites. The report also states that ad blocking on mobile isn’t yet an issue, but that is likely to change real soon. With more and more people doing the majority of their web browsing from their phones or tablets, ad blocking is going to become real popular on mobile in the very near future.
Some ads are very intrusive and others can even bring viruses to your computer, laptop, smartphone or tablet. Which is a somewhat valid reason for an Ad Blocker. That’s why we all agree with Larry Page that the ad industry needs to do better in terms of serving ads that better target the person seeing them, as well as not being as intrusive. If ads were not popping up over a page, or videos auto-playing as soon as you open the page, many people probably wouldn’t use an ad blocker. You can check out the full report from the source section below.