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posted by janrinok on Wednesday August 12 2015, @05:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-what-I-wanted-to-hear dept.

Ads have long been part of the trade-off for users of the free Web, but the rise of ad blockers is making it increasingly difficult for publishers to sustain that ad-supported model.

That's according to a report published Monday by Adobe Systems and PageFair, a startup focused on assessing the cost of ad blocking and proposing alternatives.

While PageFair clearly has a vested interest in illustrating the negative effects of ad blocking, the findings of its study with Adobe are difficult to ignore. Most notably, ad blocking will cost publishers nearly $22 billion this year, it reported.

Ad blocking has grown by 41% globally in the last 12 months, the report found, amounting now to about 198 million active ad-block users around the world.

There were some interesting geographical differences highlighted in the report, too. For instance, in the U.S., ad blocking grew by 48% over the preceding 12 months to reach 45 million active users by June. In the U.K., ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users over that same time frame.

Meanwhile, those numbers will surely be on the rise on the mobile side, Adobe noted in a blog post, given that Apple's iOS 9 will likely include ad-blocking features in Safari by default while Adblock Plus is already available in limited beta for Android.

Ad blocking represents "a major, growing problem for both digital publishers and marketers," said Greg Sterling, vice president for strategy and insights with the Local Search Association.

In many ways, the ad-blocking phenomenon is a response to security and privacy fears that have arisen in the culture at large and a rejection of the state of advertising on the PC internet, Sterling said.


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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @05:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @05:36PM (#221778)

    I for one enjoy seing them bleed dry.

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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:27PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @07:27PM (#221859) Journal

    I for one enjoy seing them bleed dry.
     
    I, for one, am outraged by this story! 22 billion!!
     
    That's freaking pathetic. We can do WAY better than that!

    • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:02PM

      by inertnet (4071) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:02PM (#221878) Journal

      I have a solution to do much better than that. I would love for AdBlock to have a "second page" option. One page fully loads all the ads into memory, in order to keep the money flowing, while I get to see the same page nice and quiet without the ads. As long as the hidden screaming page is kept silent and sandboxed or whatever to make it harmless, and it's an option that can be switched off for mobile data.

      • (Score: 2) by naubol on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:23PM

        by naubol (1918) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:23PM (#221893)

        This wouldn't work for two reasons, the conversion rate would still be the same, ie awful, for publishers, and second, I'd still have to spend so much bandwidth on the videos and other crap which is a lot of the reason I have adblock installed in the first place.

        • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:41PM

          by inertnet (4071) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:41PM (#221907) Journal

          That's why it needs to be an option. Personally I don't care about bandwidth because I've got uncapped 100Mb up/down fiber. I'd be happy to load all the ads in the background so the site owner gets paid. I wouldn't even mind if all the ads get a virtual click as well. But I wouldn't want this option on my phone.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @09:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @09:02PM (#221920)

    Damnit, I want other people to see ads and subsidize my not.