Majority of Americans now use ad blockers
- Reference: 1711574766
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/03/27/america_ad_blocker/
- Source link:
According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by research firm Censuswide, on behalf of Ghostery, a maker of software to block ads and online tracking, [1]52 percent of Americans now use an ad blocker, up from 34 percent according to 2022 Statista data.
More striking are the figures cited for technically savvy users who have worked at least five years in their respective fields – veteran advertisers, programmers, and cybersecurity experts.
[2]
The Censuswide report indicates that 66 percent of experienced advertisers, 72 percent of experienced programmers, and 76 percent of cybersecurity experts use ad blockers.
[3]
[4]
For the general public, the rationale for doing so tends to be more about protecting privacy (20 percent) than blocking ads (18 percent), with another 9 percent wanting faster web page loading.
And among the expert set, protecting privacy is cited with greater frequency – 27 percent, 30 percent, and 29 percent – for advertisers, developers, and security pros respectively.
[5]YouTube video lag wrongly blamed on its ad-blocking animus
[6]Google to start third-party cookie cull for 30 million Chrome users
[7]Meta accused of snarfing people's Snapchat data via traffic decryption
[8]In-app browsers are still a privacy, security, and choice problem
"People who know how the internet works – because they work as developers or in security or in advertising – they've all over the years decided that it was a good idea to use a tracker blocker or content blocker or adblocker, whatever you call it," said Jean-Paul Schmetz, CEO of Ghostery, in an interview with The Register . "It's pretty unanimous that people who work in this industry and know how these things function want to protect themselves."
Schmetz said one surprising finding had to do with the extent to which people trust various companies that collect online data. "It's quite amazing that Google is still trusted, even though it is the biggest collector."
[9]
Asked how likely big companies would be to abuse their data, Americans were most wary of TikTok (59 percent), followed by: Meta (56 percent), X/Twitter (49 percent), OpenAI (48 percent), Google (44 percent), Apple (41 percent), Amazon (40 percent), Microsoft (38 percent), Comscore (32 percent), and Adobe (31 percent).
Again, concerns were higher among the more experienced set.
As Schmetz observes in the report, these results show that the American public is less aware of data collection by companies with a lower public profile.
[10]
"Whether you work in advertising or as a developer or as a security expert, you tend to know that a web page is not just one thing like a magazine page or newspaper page or video or TV," said Schmetz.
A web page is not just one thing like a magazine page or newspaper page or video or TV
"It's a bunch of components that come together in your browser. And you tend to know that a lot of these components are just there for tracking and spying. And that they are unnecessary for the page.
"So you know that if you don't load them, you're going to be more private, because people will be able to build less profiles of you. You will have less ads because they have less profiles of you and your brother will be faster."
Schmetz said people are still generally not aware of the scope of third-party data collection. "It's normal for Amazon to know whether you're buying at Amazon," he said.
"What is less normal is for Tiktok to know what you are reading in the New York Times or at other sites. Maybe a better example is if you're going to, let's say Planned Parenthood or something similar, especially in this day and age. I think it would surprise 100 percent of the visitors to know that other companies are looking at that visit." ®
Bootnote
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[1] https://www.ghostery.com/blog/privacy-report-advertisers-and-adblockers
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZgSlCI@J9v3-Go7bcNGffQAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZgSlCI@J9v3-Go7bcNGffQAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZgSlCI@J9v3-Go7bcNGffQAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/youtube_video_lag_ads/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/04/google_set_to_start_cookie/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/meta_snapchat_data/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/inapp_browsers/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZgSlCI@J9v3-Go7bcNGffQAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZgSlCI@J9v3-Go7bcNGffQAAAMY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://account.theregister.com/register/?product=simple&r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theregister.com%2F
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Anyone who does not use an ad-blocker, is, at least naive, at worst irresponsible. NONE of the big tech firms can be trusted with your persona data. They all gather it and sell your information.
I am constantly surprised by friends who don't even know that ad-blockers exist. They moan about ads, but just put up with them. Just crazy.
PS: I'm not American - I'd be interested with the figures for other nations.
Hahahahahahahaah!
Good!
I have to use 3 blockers! The Internet has been crippled by ads. And personal data collection. And hackers with nasty viruses. Of course we should fight back.
And nothing was learned by the big money in 20 years.
Do they work?
I wouldn't trust an ad-blocker running in the browser created by one of the principal offenders. Even if 50% are "running an ad-blocker" are they actually blocking all the ads, or just the ones that their browser vendor doesn't make money from?
Re: Do they work?
There are two sides to it - do you see the ads, and are you being tracked even if you're not?
One way to get around ad blockers is to collect the image but then render a blank space or otherwise not bother to display it, which hides the ad but doesn't stop them collecting their tracking data.
I do not mind small, discrete ads ...
but I hate ones that use a lot of screen space, auto play video, generate popups, ... this is why I use an ad blocker and also run no-script.
Blocking ads also makes pages load faster and use less of my monthly allowance. No-script helps with privacy.
I wouldn't mind reasonable ads
If all the advertisment did was show me something relevant and not track me. I could possibly accept tracking which site a click came from if it could not be matched to a purchase in any way. Or possibly if you could guarantee that it couldn't be tracked to a specific user. I don't necessarily mind the company I buy from knowing I've bought from them before. I don't want them knowing I clicked through from an advert on the guardian and letting that leak to the world. I've a reputation to maintain.
When I want to buy a lawnmower I'm happy for adverts showing lawnmowers. I'm not happy to still receive them three weeks after I bought one and am trying to buy a computer.
Have an advert for a SAP on the reg when I'm viewing stories about a disastrous oracle deployment is amusing, appropriate and may very well target a group of people that are interested and can purchase these services.
Having the same advert on YouTube if my kid is looking at some pointless video isn't useful to anyone.
I use an ad blocker because I find the ads annoying and intrusive, and given that they're usually arriving courtesy of Javascript from an unknown third party broker, I don't want that script, which is potentially a malware vector, running on my system. I also run a script blocker, which is an eye-opener to see the huge variety of third-party scripts that some sites run. Again, a potential malware vector, so I try to only run the minimum necessary to load the page. If it's too difficult I give up and go elsewhere.
Anyone who can implement a decent server-side ad-dispenser will probably do well with it, because then the ads get served as part of the page load rather than a separate script and would be way harder to block. It also avoids the malware problem because static images are way less likely to be a source of something dodgy. However, all those third party data-collection companies would find their business models dented.
50% blocking ads?
Better double the ads to compensate.