Ad blockers and piracy have become "an established social norm" amongst young millennials

Adblockers are especially popular amongst young millennials, about two-thirds block ads on desktop PCs and mobile devices, according to a report called Millennials At The Gate. The number is much higher than in other age groups. About 69% of the young millennials also pirates music and video.

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The report titled Millennials At The Gate (PDF) is based on a survey of 2,700 millennials aged 18 to 24 and conducted by the company Anatomy Media. While about 15% of all US internet users uses adblockers, ad blocking has become "an established social norm" amongst young millennials with more than 66% using one.

Reasons for using adblockers are to avoid intrusive ads, to speed up browsing and to protect online privacy.

Especially video advertisements are an annoyance amongst young millennials using an adblocker, 64% of them uses an ad blocker to especially avoid online video advertisements, such as those from YouTube.

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Piracy is also an established social norm amongst young millennials, 69% of the group uses at least one method of piracy (download, stream or mobile). Torrents aren't very popular, only 17% of the young millennials uses this technology to watch content without paying for it. Watching illegal streams on the desktop or through mobile apps is much more popular, with respectively 42% and 41% of the millennials using those methods to access pirated content.

Young millennials are an important group as they are considered early tech adopters and evangelists. Behaviors that originate with them migrate downstream to their younger siblings and friends, and upstream to their parents and beyond.

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