Ad blocker usage on the rise, says study

Ad blocking is never good news for those who earn their living online. Now, a new study by Adobe and PageFair (via Mashable) reveals that ad blocking has jumped by 11 percent in the past year. It now brings the overall number of users from 198 million to 220 million. The study further reveals that the numbers are only going to increase next year and predicts nearly 300 million users. The study involves a survey conducted on over 1000 people, and also the proprietary data tracked by Pagefair software. One of the finding says that Europe, particularly Germany, Denmark and Sweden, have about one-third of all Internet users with ad blockers. On the brighter side, the report claims that overall consumer attitude towards online ads has also been changing. About seven out of 10 people who participated in the survey said ads have improved in quality or the experience stayed constant. Six out of ten said marketers offered interesting ads, while 80 percent said they would prefer more personalised ads. But about a quarter of respondents find more personalisation rather creepy. This doesn’t mean people are open to ads. Those using ad blockers, nine out of ten, said they don’t plan on turning off the blockers. The rate of mobile ad blocking use in the US and Europe is almost negligible, which is in contrast to online habits in Asia-Pacific. Emerging countries like India have seen a mobile-first approach, and for many a smartphone is the primary device for Internet usage. With this, there also have been many companies working on ad-blockers and even browsers with ad-blocking abilities such as UCBrowser and Opera . Needless to say, mobile ad-blockers may simple wipe out billions in revenue . Recently, social media giant Facebook is said to have introduced a technology by which the advertisements on the platform would bypass the adblockers  on desktop browsers, making it harder for people to avoid seeing them. The Menlo Park-headquartered company has also asked its users to identify which ads they do not like, to allow the firm to collect in-depth information for marketers.