Definition

Ad blocking is an act of preventing ads from appearing on the website. These ads are blocked using ad blocker softwares.

Description

The survey pop-ups on a website, hampers the concentration, ultimately forces the user to leave the website. This is why people started using ad blockers for an uninterrupted user experience.

After December 2016, about 11% of the world’s population was observed to use ad blocking software globally.

The high load speed of the web page with fewer distractions motivates the users to spend more time on the website. Users who want to browse websites just for information without blockages, use ad blockers.

Unwanted ads affect the user’s experience while browsing a web page. They reduce the website’s loading speed, which worsens the performance. This is why it is important to use ad blockers.

Too many ads on a website can force the users to leave the website sooner than earlier, it increases the bounce rate. Which further pushes the business down and nullifies your efforts of creating an ad campaign.

With ad blockers, ads are removed and the page load time decreases. Further the data consumption is reduced which is beneficial for those who survive on limited data packs.

Why do people use Ad Blocking Technology?

There are two popular reasons for which Ad Blocking Technology is used:

• They felt the computers were attacked by viruses and malwares because of ads.
• People found that ad blockers were popular.

How Ad Blockers Work?

Ad Blockers work as a gate guard that prevents unwanted ads to interrupt the user when they are browsing a website. This is how an ad blocker works:

• The user can install an ad blocker on their system.
• The ad blocker will then prevent any unwanted elements to download on the user’s site.
• The ad blocker will prevent any interaction between a program that displays ad and a server that has pop-up ads, banners, etc.
• The ad blockers have filters that have a list of rules to detect advertisements and keep them separate from the desired content. These filters are an easy reference list that is given by the developers.

The filters can at times reduce the speed of the system and the user might believe that the internet is slow. This is why the developers improve the syntax of the filter to get best ad blocking.

Using too many filters can create errors and slow the speed of the system.

Pros and Cons of Ad Blocking

Pros of Ad Blocking:

• Blocks malicious ads: The ad blocker also blocks some malicious ads that can affect the device with malware once you click on the ads.
• Make browsing experience smoother: Ad blockers clean the website and remove the clutter to help you with the real content. The internet appears to be faster because the bandwidth is saved.
• Keeps your privacy: Ad blockers keep other users from seeing the personalised ads on your system for the recently searched items.
• Ad Blockers: Different ad blockers can save battery also.

Cons of Ad Blocking:

• Financially hurt the advertisers: Ads are a common source of income for many websites and publishers. This is how you pay for the content you would like to read. When you disable the ad, the publisher of the ad does not get a chance to earn revenue and the brand does not get sales.
• You may not always be protected as the ad companies quickly devise newer ways of advertising.

Situations when Ad-blockers do not work

These are the situations when an ad blocker does not work:

• Acceptable Ads: These are unobtrusive ads that are clearly labelled and approved by the Acceptable Ads Committee. These ads might pass an ad blocker.
• Ads on social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, etc might bypass ad blocker.
• Ads that the video maker or the content creator ads to push a product they want to sell, are difficult to avoid.

How Ad Blocking can affect your website

This is how ad blockers can affect the business of marketing for different websites:

• It can affect data collection: Marketers will not be able to collect any data for their website like liking of the customers, hours of visit, total time spent on the website, etc. In short, marketers will find it difficult to collect the data about user’s behaviour. Largely it can affect the data like page views and traffic sources.
• Some of the website content is not readable or accessible when their are ad blockers installed on the system.

For example:

Rajat was reading a post published by Washington Post. The moment he clicked on the link of the post, he received a notification that the ad blocker is ON.

It indicated that Rajat would get to read the post only if he turns off the ad. This is a paid content which generates income for the publisher when you click on the ad.

Rajat turned off his ad blocker and then he could read the post further.

FAQs

How are Ads blocked?

Ads can be blocked by ad-blockers, which helps remove advertising material like intrusive ads from the website. These ad blocking softwares checks the domain names of all the elements that load on the website against the blacklist. If any component is flagged as advertising material, the ad blockers prevent it from loading.

It is legal to block the ads. Websites can now curate and advertise what the customers want to see. It increases the time spent on the website further adding to the SEO ranking factor.

What are the benefits of using ad-blockers?

Speed breakers are essential on the crossing, but having bumpers or pits on the road, from one end to another, can be irritating. It will irk you to drive, and maybe you will never use the way again. Right? Similarly, too many advertisements on the website can make your browsing experience poor. So you need to remove all of this unwanted content, intrusive ads, video ads, etc., to get only the content that interests you. But how do you do it? Use ad blocking softwares.

Using ad-blockers, you can get rid of all undesired content. Installing Ad-blockers offer these benefits:

• Security: These ads that pop on your website can host malware. Hackers or cybercriminals can use them to hack information at your end. The ad-blockers can offer you security and enable you to keep your system safe.
• Privacy: Ad blockers keep your private information secret. It prevents the third party from tracking details on your online buying behaviour. When these third parties have info on how you use the system, they spam your emails and any website with messages and pop-ins. And every time, you may not want to see what you have already purchased or are no longer interested in buying. With ad-blockers, ultimately, you will not have unnecessary messages occupying space in your system.
• Speed: When you use ad-blockers, the loading speed of your website improves because they do not have to load dozens of plug-ins and advertisements.

Why would you turn off your ad blocker?

Websites or publishers get paid by the advertising companies because you allow them to show their ads.

Using an ad-blocker may give you a good reading experience, but it does not benefit the publisher as the advertiser will not pay them. To handle the situation, publishers will try ways for you to prevent ad-blocking. They will either show you the sponsored content or ask you to stop the ad blocker. At times, the publisher might only let you read the content when you turn off the ad blocker. These are the reasons you might have to turn off your ad blocker.

How to block ads on YouTube?

The pre-roll and mid-roll advertisements on the YouTube channel paid the influencers a handsome sum of money. But people who are genuinely not interested in the ads can use ad blockers.
For YouTube, the users will just have to install the ad-blocking extensions on the browser. Then, you can block the annoying ads with just a click on the button.

Can you block ads on Facebook? How?

Yes, you can block ads on Facebook, but it is not easy as it may seem on YouTube.

To block ads on Facebook, you can follow these steps:

Step1: Login to your Facebook account.
Step2: Go to account settings and select the Ads.
Step3: Click on Ad settings and then change the options to Not Allowed.

In what case you will want to turn off your ad blocker?

When the ad blocker is turned on, you can read the content without any disturbance. But at times that content you like is paid by the ads you see.

In case of ad blocking, you cannot read such content and publishers do not get paid for these ads. This is why you must consider blocking ads when you are reading content on a reputable site.

Also Read – How to Advertise on Instagram?