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Of European countries, Greece has the highest rate of ad blocking in the region at 37% of users.Īs ad blocking grew by 41% in the last year to account for over $20 billion in lost revenue in 2015, Pagefair predicts that this may rise to over $40 billion in 2016.
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As ad blocking continues to gain in popularity, publishers continue to lose advertising revenue and therefore the resources they need to pay for quality, independent journalism, which, as was argued at the aforementioned conferences we attended, is necessary for an informed populace and for democracy to thrive.Ī recent study conducted by Pagefair and Adobe showed that there are close to 200 million internet users worldwide with an ad blocker installed and the figure is actually highest in Europe with 77 million. Publishers, embattled by the shift in emphasis from print and television to digital news making and storytelling, have yet to find sufficient replacement revenue models to maintain their businesses. Opponents of ad blocking argue that ad blocking contributes to the death of independent media by removing the only model of revenue available for internet publishers to maintain their sites and pay wages.
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You may well argue, “if using an ad blocker removes obtrusive ads, increases privacy and saves your precious data, then how could that possibly be a bad thing?”Īs it turns out, ad blocking’s detractors have some compelling arguments.
ADBLOCK PLUS FOR CHROME MOBILE SOFTWARE
In addition to blocking ads, most ad blocking software claims to also block ad servers from tracking you, which is a welcome privacy feature, especially considering that ad servers in the past, including Google’s own Doubleclick, have been known to serve users malware.Īnother concern is that, although ad blocking applications on mobile have yet to make as large an impact as those on desktop and laptop devices, more recently ad blocking browsers have been introduced on mobile technology which, in addition to blocking ads, also minimize users’ mobile data use as well as speeding up page loading times.Īs you can see on the chart below, oftentimes advertising costs the user more in data than editorial content. This way they can monitor the effectiveness of the ads they are serving, meaning they are gathering as much user data as possible in order to serve the most relevant advertising to you, the viewer. It is important to note that when you load a web page the ads wrestling against the content for your attention are not actually a part of that page, rather they are usually stored on a third party server which delivers them to the platform. Extensions like this effectively block all ads from appearing on sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube and publishers like Buzzfeed and the New York Times. However, if you wish to insulate yourself against a relentless barrage of advertising whilst browsing the web then there is the option to add an extension like Ad Block Plus to your browser application. What effects does it have on publishers and journalists? Are there any ethical questions to consider when using an ad blocker? What about privacy? What are the alternatives? What follows is a (hopefully) simple rundown of the things internet users should consider when making a decision whether or not to use an ad blocker.īesides being an annoying wall between you and a pleasurable internet browsing experience, it can be particularly worrying when browsing the internet to see just how much your online activities are being tracked as we are constantly fed ads directed at our personal interests. This made us consider the subject of ad blocking. EAVI recently attended conferences at the European Parliament to discuss ‘ Diversity in Media and Culture versus Convergence‘ and ‘ An Alternative Media Landscape for Europe.’ Amongst discussion of disturbing trends the concentration of media ownership in Europe and government interference on press freedoms in Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, there was also much talk about what can be done in the new media landscape to maintain independent journalism, given that the old economic models for publishers are failing in the face of the upheavals brought about by the internet.