The internet has basically become a global marketplace. Everybody is busy selling their products everywhere and putting up billboards everywhere. Well, as much as people are making good business advertising themselves out there, it becomes too much for the consumer at times.
Just imagine you are minding your own business, then all of a sudden, marketers from all over start giving you leaflets for their businesses.
Every street you take, there is a marketer waiting to explain their business to you. It sure can be annoying; and sometimes not a little! Now, this has become the case with browsing different sites.
Well, all this hustle has led people to turn to ad-blocking tools and pop-up blockers. Now, just imagine, with a pop-up blocker, you are free to browse various sites without the constant nuisance of pop-up ads.
However, these are some questions that we think are worth asking. Are all ads really annoying, or are there some that are favorable to online surfers? What exactly makes ads such a nuisance?
How online consumers feel about ads
Let’s begin from here. Are there ads that people like and those that are disliked? Now, a survey done by Hubspot in the US and Europe realizes that most people disliked mobile ads, video ads and pop-up ads. However, they had a general liking for TV ads and print ads.
The survey also asked about various types of ads and most respondents said that the worst kind of ads were full page pop-ups that require you to find the “X” to cancel them.
Also, ads that opened directly with sound were not preferred. Actually, a good 91% agreed that, today, ads have become more intrusive than they were a couple of years ago. And in fact, 79% of the respondents felt as if they were being tracked because of retargeted ads.
In come the ad blockers
Since people have found ads to be annoying to their internet browsing, many have already started incorporating ad blockers.
Actually, recent data shows that close to one billion people globally use these tools. In accordance to a report by Data Reportal, roughly 32.5% of internet users had a form of ad blocking mechanism in 2023. That’s just insane!
You see, things have not always been that way. In 2014, only 10 years ago, there were only 240 million ad block users.
However, it is worth noting that the proportion of people on the internet using ad blockers has slightly dropped from 37% in 2021 to where it is now.
Also, Indonesia is the region with the highest proportion of ad blockers (40.6%). On the other side of the line, Japan has the lowest proportion coming at 16.9%.
But why ad blockers?
Now, let’s look deeply into the reasons behind people putting ad blocks on their web browsers. Are they justified or not?
Reason 1: Ads are annoying
Finding someone who agrees that they enjoy pop-up ads will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Most of the people you meet will tell you that they get really frustrated once they are surfing the web, and a full-screen-size advert just pops up without a warning.
Many people will even leave a site because of too many ads. In fact, a 2019 study showed that around 42% of internet users flee from sites because of too many ads.
Reason 2: Ads are disruptive
You can agree that autoplay ads with sounds tend to ruin your browsing experience. Actually, so many people are frustrated by YouTube ads that just appear before you start playing a video or in the middle of one.
Just imagine having to wait for 10 seconds almost every time you want to watch something. Many industries have even blamed YouTube for pushing so many people into installing ad blockers.
Reason 3: Ads affect load time
How long are you willing to wait for a website to load before moving on to the next and never coming back to it? A report by Kissmetrics revealed that 47% of online consumers will discard a website if it takes more than 2 seconds to open.
Another report by Google claimed that 74% of internet users would completely abandon a site that takes more than 5 seconds to load. Unfortunately, website owners do not realize this but heavy ads increase the loading time of a website.
Reason 4: Ads raise security concerns
We are living in a world where phishing has become the order of the day. Therefore it’s quite vital that everyone remains as secure as possible. Since many websites depend on third- parties to publish ads, it is quite hard for the website to quality control the ads it is hosting. If not properly vetted by the publisher, then it is very easy to host malicious ads.
A good example is a 2016 incident on the Forbes website. After a noted security researcher disabled his ad blocker in order to access the Forbes website, his device’s security captured malware that had been served through an ad on the website. Many websites have suffered such cases making the skeptics even more skeptical.
In conclusion
Seeing that people have a variety of reasons behind them launching ad-blocking tools, it is quite evident that in the near future, more people will be joining the bandwagon. Anyway, it is everyone’s right to operate on the internet with the comfort they feel they deserve.
