The Impact of Ad-Blocking on the Sustainable Development of the Digital Advertising Ecosystem

Abstract

Despite the rapidly growing expenditure on digital advertising, the effectiveness of the functioning of the digital advertising ecosystem is becoming less and less visible. This is related to the fact that only a small part of the expenditure incurred by organizations on various forms of digital advertising brings the expected results. For several years now, a phenomenon that stifles the effectiveness of the digital advertising ecosystem and deteriorates the ROI (return on investment) of advertisers has been the widespread practice of blocking advertising, known as ad-blocking. In this context, the aim of this article is to analyze the scale of the phenomenon of ad-blocking and its causes in terms of its impact on the effectiveness of the functioning of the digital advertising ecosystem and its sustainable development, which is extremely important from the point of view of the development of electronic commerce. In order to carry out this study, a literature analysis was conducted on the genesis of this phenomenon, its scale, causes, and economic effects. After this stage of research, in order to obtain primary data, a questionnaire survey was conducted on a group of individual Internet users. The results of the research indicated three main reasons for the development of ad-blocking. These are: excessive number of advertisements, their excessive invasiveness, and the mismatch between the advertisements displayed to the user and the user’s interests. In the context of these results and of the continued sustainable functioning of the digital advertising ecosystem, it is essential that the advertising industry be able to offer users alternatives to ad-blocking that they consider valuable from their own point of view and that take the users’ expectations into account.

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

“…First of all, the aim was to ensure that the persons participating in the research belong to the circle of persons who use the Internet, and use social media intensively. The literature analysis and previous studies clearly show that students are definitely such persons [6]. Secondly, it was important for the survey to include persons from the so-called Generation Z; namely, people born in the mid-1990s and later.…”

“…The hypotheses were formulated based on the completed literature analysis (see sections 1-3), also taking into account the results of the author's previously published studies (see [6]). It relates In total, the survey covered a group of 612 respondents (about 100 people from each of the faculties covered by the study), and assumed questionnaires completed directly with the use of Google Forms (the total number of full-time students at the Opole University of Technology is 3059).…”

“…With increasing investments, what is clearly visible is the decreasing effectiveness of activities carried out in the electronic space [5,6]. There are a number of reasons for this situation.…”

“…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].…”

Evaluation of Adblock Software Usage

“…The PageFair report's index of blocking ads for Poland in 2017 [1] amounted to 33%, while in 2015 it maintained the level of 34.9%. Another study published in 2018 showed that 61.2% of Polish internet users are using ad blocking software [41]. Apparently, the reason for this phenomenon is the overload with advertisements.…”