EDU-CON Social Media Conference 2015

AdBlockers

„Avoiding Ads has become the Norm“

Jens Wösten

Bachelor of Information&Communication Technology

Agenda

• AdBlockers – Effects, Techniques and what is acutally blocked?

– Mobile AdBlockers are trending

– Usage rates amongst young adults

– Ad-blindness

• Forecast and the „Cold War of AdBlocking“

Effects and Techniques

• AdBlockers are programs in Browsers (plugins) that filter content. In this case: Online-Ads

• A browser loads a website alongside the Ads • The AdBlocker scans website for signatures. Much

like an anti-virus program and removes the Ads Sometimes websites won‘t work or might load slower: But people are ok with that. Because truth is…

Young adults think:

Traditional Online Ads Suck!

Effect of AdBlocking - Facebook

Effect of AdBlocking - YouTube

Effect of AdBlocking - Google

Effect of AdBlocking - Google

Benefits of Blocking Ads

• Ad Free Websites… – load faster

– use Less data (mobile data plans)

– are less obtrusive. Prettier and cleaner looking

– ease of use of a websites/google is improved

• In short: once a person starts blocking online Ads they never go back

AdBlockers enter the mobile stage

• AdBlockers on mobile got a push recently after the release of AdBlocking for Apple iOS

• AdBlockers were most downloaded Apps for weeks in the App Store

• Multi million devices were now mobile AdBlocker enabled.

• People despise Ads so much they even paid for AdBlockers!

AdBlockers enter the mobile stage

AdBlocking becomes the norm

• AdBlock plus is one AdBlock Software: – 200 Million downloads world-wide

– 18 million active AdBlock Users in Germany (that is 25% of all internet users)

– Our survey shows: 54% of young adults Block

– 80% increase in downloads from 2014 to 2015

AdBlocking becomes the norm

Ad-blindness

What about people that do not block ads?

43% of young adults never click on ads

36% of young adults rarely click on ads

The Cold War of Ad-Blocking Newswebsites started blocking users of AdBlockers completely

The Cold War of Ad-Blocking

• Users in turn started to donate money to Ad-Blocker Developers in protest

• Free news exposure for AdBlockers. More installations.

• YouTube Vidoes were created to „unblock the Ad-Blocker block“

• Newspapers sued the Video creators

• Even more publicity, exposure, installations and donations were the result

Forecast • The number of installations will continue to grow. And will

grow faster and faster. (word of mouth, news exposure) • Google will try to pay to be put on whitelists of the Ad-Blocker

Developers • Non-whitelist alternatives become more and more popular

because otherwise Ads show up. „A blocker that doesn‘t block is faulty.“

We expect Native Content Marketing in turn to become more

important in the future!

EDU-CON Social Media Conference 2015

Do you have any questions? Thank you for your attention! Jens Wösten Bachelor of Information&Communication Technology