Evaluation of Adblock Software Usage

Abstract

The article shows the main factors of adblocking software usage. The study was based on data obtained by a web questionnaire. The research was focused on evaluation of ad blocking (adblock) software usage factors in five categories: (1) gender, age, and education; (2) use of advertising and sources of knowledge about advertising; (3) technical and social reasons for blocking online advertisements; (4) usage of an adblock-wall; and (5) type of online advertisement. An evaluation of adblock usage factors revealed four main technical reasons for adblock usage connected with website technology and web development problemsinterruption, amount of ads, speed, and security; and one social reason for adblock usage, namely, the problem of privacy.

How Does the Adoption of Ad Blockers Affect News Consumption?

“…The free version comes with some restrictions; for example, nonpaying users can access only a subset of the content of the paid version or only a limited number of articles, whereas paying users have unlimited access. However, it is common to expose both sets of users to advertising (Lindsay 2018), despite the fact that users claim that ads interrupt the web browsing experience, slow it down, and intrude on their privacy (Sołtysik-Piorunkiewicz, Strzelecki, and Abramek 2019). Offering a paid but ad-free version of a news website could provide a subscription incentive for loyal users who wish to support the site but do not wish to endure exposure to ads (Appel et al 2020; Westcott et al 2019).…”

“…First, a user adopts an ad blocker on an entire browser, and thus does not target removal of ads for a specific website. Second, surveys suggest that a user’s decision to adopt an ad blocker is motivated by ad annoyance, page loading speed, and privacy concerns (Sołtysik-Piorunkiewicz, Strzelecki, and Abramek 2019). These factors are likely to relate to a user’s preference regarding ads, rather than to a specific experience on a single website.…”

“…We match the treatment and control groups based on the following covariates. 2 First, we include three controls for demographics—age, gender, and income—as prior empirical studies show that these demographic variables are important determinants of news consumption (Fan 2013; Roos, Mela, and Shachar 2020) and ad blocker usage (Sołtysik-Piorunkiewicz, Strzelecki, and Abramek 2019). Second, we match users on pretreatment browsing behavior, namely, article views, breadth, and number of visits.…”

“…The first assumption is that users are willing to "pay" the publisher for its content by enduring exposure to ads. Clearly, the popularity of ad blockers calls the validity of this assumption into question (Sołtysik-Piorunkiewicz, Strzelecki, and Abramek 2019). The second assumption is that this mode of "payment" is beneficial overall for the publisher, in that it does not substantially impair users' consumption of the publisher's content.…”

Analysis of the Role of Digital Influencers and Their Impact on the Functioning of the Contemporary On-Line Promotional System and Its Sustainable Development

“…In recent years, this has been clearly manifested by the development of the ad-blocking phenomenon [10,11]. Its main reasons are too many advertisements being displayed online, and their growing aggressiveness affecting the on-line user experience [6,12,13]. Another important factor is that users become aware of the hidden costs resulting from online ads, such as increased loading time and bandwidth consumption [14].…”