Adblocker - Simple question asked of anyone?

How many are aware?

[farmboy]

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are walking around with computers, of one type or another, in one size or other, who aren't aware of some basic things.

Which leads me to this question that's relevant to AdSense. How many people out there are aware of an adblocker, how to get one and how to use it?

Forget those who just bought or downloaded the latest version of whatever that will block ads. How often do you talk with someone in ordinary daily life where the subject of adblockers comes up in the conversation?


FarmBoy

[ken_b]

How often do you talk with someone in ordinary daily life where the subject of adblockers comes up in the conversation?

Almost never. I don't bring it up, but I have heard others bemoan how many ads the see online.

I don't offer any info on ad blockers.

[keyplyr]

There are plenty of discussion forums where that topic trends.

[farmboy]

There are plenty of discussion forums where that topic trends.

OK, I was thinking of people at work, play etc. in real world conversations, not in cyber world talk.

But now that you mention it, are you speaking of Fxxxbook & Txxxxer type discussions? , webmaster type discussions? or all?


FarmBoy

[keyplyr]

I follow trails to investigate copyright infringement, image hot-linking, etc from paths found in my server logs. This often leads me to discussion forums, blogs & social media discussions where I see topics about what most deem as SPAM but more correctly are just ads campaigns at various places on the internet. These discussions quickly turn to how to block it.

I wouldn't know what people talk about at their work obviously. IMO it would be a bit abstract to discuss adblockers anywhere but online to reference the application itself.

[ember]

I work with Millennials. They are literally addicted to their phones but know nothing beyond texting, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Pokeman Go (dear God). I'm sure they know what ad blockers are, but they don't mention them.

[farmboy]

They are literally addicted to their phones but...

You could say that again, and again, and again ...

I'm amazed just watching small groups of "friends" walking along on a beautiful day with each person in their own little world with their eyes glued to the rude box in hand. (Rude box is my term for a Smart Phone)

FarmBoy

[keyplyr]

Odd paradox

In some ways technology has connected people from all points around the world.

In other ways that same inovation seperates us with a means of isolation.

[trebuchet]

I have had discussions and arguments about adblocking in forums, by email and in real life. The attitudes, responses and levels of understanding tend to vary.

[netmeg]

Only with industry folk (and here). The civilians either don't know or care. At one point one of my user survey questions asked how much the ads on my sites bothered people, and only two or three (out of hundreds who responded) said they were bothered by them.

[zdgn]

I personally think the threat of adblockers is exaggerated. My own studies & surveys over the years -- on my own (diverse) set of web properties -- have repeatedly confirmed my own belief that those who aggressively block ads aren't the type of users that interact with ads in the first place, even if they're forced into seeing them. Moreover, years of user feedback and interaction over my sites' various features, usage, trends etc have almost never focused on *not* showing ads or ad blockers. In fact, the ad-related feedback and discussions I see are about the *subjects* of the ads occasionally (e.g. 'what a strange ad next to xyz', or 'funny how I saw abc ads on the page about xyz', etc,). I think people are smart. If they find value in your content, they are quite comfortable with ads around it. But, that's my thinking and experience and of course everyone's case is different. There must be niches where the use of adblockers is higher. :-)

[farmboy]

I personally think the threat of adblockers is exaggerated.

I agree.

I'm in a niche, I don't know that it has a name, and for me this goes way back to the beginning of AdSense.

If I see an ad in a tricky or troublesome location, I avoid doing any business with the advertiser and usually avoid going back to the site for any content.


FarmBoy

[claus]

I'm one of those using Adblockers, and I can confirm that for me any ad would be irrelevant. I'm just not going to buy, join, check out, or whatever else the ad would have me doing. I'm not very vocal about this preference of mine, but maybe I'm listening more because I hear the topic of AdBlocking relatively often in ordinary non-web-people (ie "common people") conversations.

[piatkow]

Most "civilians" don't change defaults so as long as ad blocking is a positive choice most won't bother. However my browser blocks pop ups by default and my firewall blocks ads, both require a positive action to enable pop ups or ads.

My main concern about ad blockers isn't the loss of revenue, annoying though that may be, as it isn't my main income stream but early blockers could and did take out legit images and navigation. I check my sites with blocking both on and off to make sure that I haven't done anything to create a false positive.

[keyplyr]

I'm more concerned with all the advertisers dropping out because of the adblocker publicity. These are people that are very much aware.

[tangor]

The Win 10 Anniversary update just might change the number of folks who know about ad blockers: Edge is getting Ad Block Plus as an extension, and very clearly marked. [download.cnet.com...]

Admittedly the average user has no clue ... until it affects their pocketbook, and some phone plans in particular are getting hit.

Time will tell.

[csdude55]

I personally think the threat of adblockers is exaggerated

This has not been my experience. I have a great many users (roughly 40% of my current traffic) that use ad blockers, but when confronted, most of them have no idea that they have it installed.

After discussion, the wide majority had a spyware infection, and then either a friend, relative, or sadly, a local repair shop installed an ad blocker to fix it. So they still have the spyware, they just don't see the ads now and think that the problem is fixed.

That has been a long and expensive uphill battle for many of us.

[Yayabobi]

There was a post here in the past that provided a simple piece of JS that allowed each webmaster to better understand what % of their traffic was being blocked by ads. It's very different across content niches.