Ad blocking has become a topic of fevered interest among publishers and advertising companies this year. Many fear that the tipping point has been reached already, with too many ads being blocked to maintain a steady income following the established methods of views in exchange for advertising. A new report from a research firm called eMarketer seems to back up this fear, showing a marked increase in ad blocking use.
These figures are limited to the United States, but the research shows that ad blocking use increased from 20% of users in 2015, to 26.3% this year and will increase to 32% in 2017. That will be 86.6 million ad blocking users in the United States alone. The worldwide figure will be just as alarming for advertisers.
So far, the vast majority of ad blockers have been installed in desktops and laptops, but the all important mobile group is slowly moving towards use of these apps as well, and eMarketer expects 11% of that market will shift to the use of ad blockers sometime next year.
New strategies are being devised to combat this trend, the most prominent one being a subscription model where those who pay a monthly fee get access to a publication without ads. Others are now refusing access to those who have active ad blocking apps installed. This may lead to a war between the ad blockers and the internet sites, and yet another game of escalating whack a mole will begin.
