Do you hate the two minute advertisement before your 30
second YouTube cat video? Can’t stand the popups that know you have a passion
for collecting teapots?
With plenty of free ad-blocking software at your disposal you
never have to view an advertisement on the Internet again!
Consumers around the world are tired of being subjected to
advertisement while browsing online and have looked to software to block ads on
web pages. For some users the main concern is their privacy. For others, they
look to block ads that know what websites they visit and what interests they
have. The vast majority however just don’t want to see ads online and see them
as a major annoyance. Ad-blocking by Internet users is at an all-time high:
“The prevalence of ad-blocking increased 69 percent worldwide
between the second quarter of 2013 and Q2 2014, according to the recently
released report "Adblocking Goes
Mainstream" from Adobe and PageFair, a two-year-old
Irish company that measures the use of ad blocking by visitors to publisher
websites and provides technology to display "non-intrusive" ads to
those users.”
And who’s really surprised? With free browser extensions like
Adblock Plus you never have to be subjected to unsolicited advertisement online
again. Personally I think extensions like this are a godsend with the prevalence
of advertisements on the web in general. I’m ok with standalone text
advertisements or banners that just sit there on the page, but when I’m greeted
with an ad that has an auto-play video that can’t be muted or a popup of any
sort I never want to visit that site again.
An example of this is the popular gaming streaming website
Twitch.tv. Whenever you go to somebody’s stream, you get a 30 second auto-play video
advertisement that cannot be skipped. With AdBlock Plus, those advertisements
are completely removed and the stream starts immediately. This leads to a much
better viewing experience in general. You don’t have to sit through another 30
second advertisement if you ever want to switch to somebody else’s stream or if
you need to reload the stream due to it not working,
I can’t imagine that I’m in the minority when I say that I’ve
never enjoyed or seen the use of advertisements that interrupt or otherwise
disrupt the content that I’m watching or reading online. If I’m reading an
article on a news website and a popup comes up telling me to subscribe to their
email list or register to their site or whatever the case may be, chances are I’m
never going back to that site. I see it as a major negative when an
advertisement is actively disrupting what I’m trying to do on a website. This
includes an ad before the video I’m trying to watch, an ad DURING the video I’m
trying to watch, the previous example of a popup in the middle of an article,
and many more annoying ideas that advertisement agencies have come up with in
the Internet age. Is it really profitable to annoy users with ads while they’re
trying to do something?
The ideal scenario in my opinion is that this upswing in
users using ad-blocking software will encourage less intrusive advertisements
in general. I understand that ads are necessary to keep a lot of websites
funded, but there needs to be a better way to advertise without ruining the
user experience on the site.
http://www.campaignlive.com/article/ad-blockers-gain-ground-consumers-say-enough/1326412
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