In Q2 2014 there were approximately 144 million monthly active adblock users globally (4.9% of all internet users); a number which has increased 69% over the previous 12 months. You would think that consumers don’t want to see ads as they surf the Web.
Key insights
- Google Chrome is bringing ad blocking to the masses and seeing the largest increase of adblockers, up by 96% to approximately 86 million monthly active users between Q2 2013 and Q2 2014.
- Share of ads blocked by “end-user installed” browsers is 4.7x higher than by “pre-installed” browsers. Adblock adoption is happening all over the world
- Poland, Sweden, Denmark, and Greece are leading the way with an average of 24% of their online populations using adblocking software in Q2 2014.
- Countries like Japan, Spain, China and Italy are catching up; with their percentage of online populations that use adblock plug-ins growing as much as 134% over the last 12 months.
- Adblock adoption is extremely high in certain demographics, with 54% of male survey respondents between 18-29 years saying they use adblocking software.
- There is an ongoing struggle between the “pay” and “free” content models where 80% of survey respondents are unwilling to pay for ad-free content; meanwhile 61% of those same respondents were “completely unwilling” to see ads which support free content.
- Men are 48% more likely than women to use adblock plug-ins when browsing.
- Adblock users believe some ads are worse than others, and the majority are willing to view non-intrusive ad formats.
- Currently adblocking is relatively low on mobile, but upcoming mobile adblock plug-in solutions may change that.
Insights…
Why is this happening? Because the cost of broadband Internet and cell phone data have been increasing and consumers don’t feel they should have to pay to view ads when they want to read content. In addition too many ads are irrelevant to users and marketers are not testing or developing online ads wit target audience users. The best success I ever had with online ads was developing and testing online ads BEFORE going live leading to an 800% increase in click-through rates compared to ads that were not tested.
