Tag: acceptable ads

Ad filterers: an educated demographic

Posted on by AAX Team

Education levels among ad filterers, or the 95% of users that have an ad blocker installed but also consent to be served respectful, non-intrusive ads, is something we’ve examined in the past.

And here’s what we found:

Whereas only 23.3% of non- ad blocking users held a university degree, and only 4.9% held a postgraduate degree, an impressive 27% of ad blockers held a university degree and 11.7% of ad filterers had a Masters or higher. (Source)

But that doesn’t mean that, within ad filterers as a demographic whole, there isn’t a range of education levels. Approximately 60% have either a high school degree or some amount of college education, and more than a quarter hold a university degree. The only outlier is high school: only 0.9% percent of ad filterers fail to graduate.
In light of the global upheaval caused by COVID, which saw bedrooms become studies, Zoom grids replace seminar rooms, and graduation ceremonies take place online, we thought that the subject of education among ad filterers required a updated, closer look.

And we noticed in interesting trend: ad filterers are still a highly educated bunch, with a higher percentage holding a university degree than previously.

A scant 1.2% of ad filterers only completed schooling up until age 16. A full 28.2% had finished school at age 18—the average age to finish high school and receive a diploma.

A lot of ad filterers had even more education, with 25.7 graduating technical school or completing “some college.”

And 29.3% had completed a university degree (meaning a Bachelors’) and 15.6% received a postgraduate degree, or an MA/PhD. That’s a significantly larger percentage than in the recent past, and represents a jump of 2.3 percentage points and 3.9 percentage points, respectively.

Education and politics

According to recent Pew Research, people with post-graduate degrees are considerably more likely to consider themselves Democrat than Republican, and slightly more likely to consider themselves Democrat if they’ve received some college or a university degree.

Democrats lead by 22 points (57%-35%) in leaned party identification among adults with post-graduate degrees. The Democrats’ edge is narrower among those with college degrees or some post-graduate experience (49%-42%), and those with less education (47%-39%).

This suggests, again, that the highly educated ad filterer demographic is more likely to skew Democrat than Republican. But only slightly.

After all, the majority of ad blocking users have “some college” or a Bachelor’s degree—a demographic that, according to Pew Research, is less strictly committed to voting Democrat than those with postgrad degrees, and more evenly split along party affiliation lines.

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AAX is devoted to knowing everything there is to know about ad filterers. In one previous study we looked into what makes this demographic unique, another study examined their purchasing habits, and our most recent study dug deep into ad filterer motivation: the reasons ad filterers avoid advertisements, and how and why those reasons change.
Our passion for all things ad filterer is why we’ve turned our attention to an issue that’s capturing everyone’s attention: ad filterers’ political profiles. We’ve looked through the fascinating findings over at the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) to compile a new study—American Ad Blocking Users’ Political Profile—available for free download in May 2022.

How old are ad filterers?

Posted on by AAX Team

They say that age ain’t nothing but a number, but the fact of the matter is: we’re all influenced by how many trips around the sun we’ve taken. Everything from the quality of our sleep to how loud we like to play our music, from our idea of the perfect Saturday night to how long we like to sleep in on Sunday morning…has a little something to do with age.

We’ve previously examined various reasons that ad filterers of all ages choose to block ads, but we’ve never looked into the age breakdown of the ad filtering demographic. And what has been revealed is that young people are more likely than older people to curate their ad content in the specific way that makes them “ad filterers,” the 95% of ad blocking users that have an ad blocker installed but elect to be served respectful and non-intrusive ads.

Nearly a quarter—24.7%—of ad filterers are 25-34 years old. The second-largest group is even younger—22.2% are only 16-24 years old.

From the mid-thirties onwards, the percentage of ad filterers keeps decreasing with age. 20.8% of ad filterers are 35-44, 17.8% are 45-54, and a mere 14.5% are 55-64.

So what does that have to do with politics?

Age is often correlated with political leanings, with some believing that people tend to become more conservative as they age. But the last half decade of political life in the USA has
shown that the truth is a little more nuanced.

A lot of this has to do with the graying of America. In the 2020 presidential election, a staggering amount of voters were fifty or older.

From Pew Research:

More than half of Republican and GOP-leaning voters (56%) are ages 50 and older, up from 39% in 1996. And among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, half are 50 and older, up from 41% in 1996. (Source)

The rest of Pew’s data is divided in two: those aged 18-29, and those aged 30-49. The 2020 election marked the first real election that many Gen Z’ers were eligible to vote, and it was interesting to examine the turnout among the youngest subsection of voters.

The result: 19% of Democratic-leaning voters were 18-29, while only 13% of Republican-leaning voters were 18-29.

That leaves those voters in solid middle-adulthood, who also make up a high percentage of ad filterers. But the breakdown among those voters is surprising: there was virtually no difference between the percentage of Democrats and Republicans. An even 30% of Democratic-leaning voters were 35-44, and 29% of Republican-leaning voters were 34-55.

This fairly even split in terms of voting patterns makes it imperative to look at more data samples when analyzing political leanings. We know that a 27-year-old is significantly more likely to stay out late, live with roommates, and—yes—block ads than a 54-year-old…but they’re not that much more likely to vote Democratic.

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AAX is devoted to knowing everything there is to know about ad filterers. In one previous study we looked into what makes this demographic unique, another study examined their purchasing habits, and our most recent study dug deep into ad filterer motivation: the reasons ad filterers avoid advertisements, and how and why those reasons change.
Our passion for all things ad filterer is why we’ve turned our attention to an issue that’s capturing everyone’s attention: ad filterers’ political profiles. We’ve looked through the fascinating findings over at the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) to compile a new study—American Ad Blocking Users’ Political Profile—available for free download in May 2022.

Where Do Ad Filterers Live?

Posted on by AAX Team

And what does the location of American ad filterers reveal about their political leanings?

The last time we looked at the question of location, one trend emerged: cities. In 2017, the data we examined revealed that 68.8% of ad blockers lived in urban areas. But the world has changed a lot since 2017. And the pandemic ushered in an unprecedented era of remote work, allowing former urbanites to relocate.

And relocate they did.

In 2017, 21% of respondents lived in the suburbs. Now that number has more than doubled and a half of all ad filterers—48.9%—call the suburbs home. One third—exactly 33.3%—live in urban areas. And 17.8% live in the countryside.

So: what does that mean in terms of political affiliation?

Urban vs. rural: the traditional approach

Prior to 2020, the trend was clear: city-dwellers leaned Democrat, and rural folk leaned Republican.

From Pew Research:

Rural areas tend to have a higher concentration of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, while a majority of Americans in urban communities identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. These patterns have become more pronounced over the past two decades as rural areas have moved in a Republican direction and urban counties have become even more Democratic. (Source)

But who lives in the suburbs, according to Pew Research? That’s where things get interesting. According to research done before the pandemic, “Americans who live in the suburbs are about evenly divided in their partisan loyalties.”

The Great Covid Relocation

As we know, COVID-19 changed everything. And that includes demographics. People left dense urban areas in large numbers, choosing sparsely-populated suburbs, large backyards, walkable neighborhoods and nearby parks as urban amenities shuttered for months, if not years, at a time.

The exodus was particularly pronounced from New York and San Francisco, according to The New York Times. Approximately 30 million households changed address.

But what’s interesting is that the same places that attracted people in 2020, at the height of pandemic relocation, were the same places that attracted people in 2019, before the world had heard of COVID-19 and a most people thought of a pandemic as the plot from a Steven Soderbergh movie.

And the places people located to contain large swaths of suburban areas.

These smaller metros—Boise, Idaho; Sarasota, Florida; Youngstown, Ohio—were attractive to people looking for a new home even prior to the era of Zoom and mask mandates. And they’ve remained appealing options for people being priced out of other, larger metropolitan areas, professionals looking to make a change, and employees whose families are growing and whose need for local playgrounds are more pressing than the need to be in the center of it all.

This suggests that, despite reports that a great COVID-related flight would turn American demographics on its head, things have remained the same.

And this aligns with what we know about the way that ad filterers vote: the majority vote Democrat, the smallest percentage vote Republican, but more than a quarter are undecided or elect not to say—in other words, the political profile of a suburban American voter.

AAX is devoted to knowing everything there is to know about ad filterers. In one previous study we looked into what makes this demographic unique, another study examined their purchasing habits, and our most recent study dug deep into ad filterer motivation: the reasons ad filterers avoid advertisements, and how and why those reasons change.

Our passion for all things ad filterer is why we’ve turned our attention to an issue that’s capturing everyone’s attention: ad filterers’ political profiles.
We’ve looked through the fascinating findings over at the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) to compile a new study—American Ad Blocking Users’ Political Profile—available for free download in May 2022.

What’s the Party Allegiance Breakdown Among American Ad Filterers?

Posted on by AAX Team

AAX is getting ready to publish another insight-rich report, filled with fascinating findings gleaned from the vaults that the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) keeps about internet behavior.

We’re interested in all internet behavior, of course, but we’re especially interested in the behavior of the demographic GWI calls “selective ad blocking users.”

Otherwise known as ad filterers, this is a demographic composed of the 95% of internet users that choose to run an ad blocker but have consented to see some ads—like the unobtrusive, respectful forms of advertisement known as “Acceptable Ads.”

We know a few things about these interesting individuals. We know they’re more affluent and more engaged than other groups. We know they spend both more time and more money on the internet.

And now we know about their party affiliation.

When examining the party affiliation among USA-based ad filterers, a few things become immediately clear: the largest percentage (nearly 40%) of ad filterers vote Democrat, and the second-largest percentage (roughly 26%) vote Republican.

But it’s important as well to examine the next three most popular choices: Independent, Undecided/unsure and Prefer not to say. Because those three fields, when added up, make 26.6%—larger than the percentage of Republican ad filterers, and enough to tip the balance in a meaningful way.

Red + Blue = Purple

So what do we know about these independent, undecided, and secretive voters?

One thing that’s been made clear is that many independent voters—especially the younger ones—“focus on issues, not party.” That’s one reason we at AAX have compiled a study that connects “party affiliation” with questions about voters’ stated values and their stance on a variety of issues.

Only slightly more than half of voters ages 18-24 were affiliated with one party in 2020. These voters, it’s suggested, “want[ed] to be involved in the issue, not the ideology.” In other words, they were more interested in the values of the candidate than they were with identifying as a donkey or an elephant.

In general, independent voters of all ages tend to lean towards a party…even if they’re not ready to pledge allegiance to that party, put up lawn signs, go to election night parties at the local Democrat or Republican headquarters, or otherwise absorb that party into their identity.

According to recent Pew Research:

An overwhelming majority of independents (81%) continue to “lean” toward either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Among the public overall, 17% are Democratic-leaning independents, while 13% lean toward the Republican Party. (Source)

But, the Pew article goes on to state, the rest of the independent voters are still a wild card, with many of them staying away from political activity altogether, and many more of them keeping their political identity a secret forever.

Whether the trend towards identifying as an independent voter continues upward will remain to be seen, but one fact remains: more than a quarter of the ad filtering demographic are neither blue, nor red…but a shade of purple.

Announcing AAX’s New Forthcoming Study!

Posted on by AAX Team
We know people in the USA are blocking ads.

And we know who they are: ad filterers, the affluent, well-educated, and engaged 95% of users that choose to run an ad blocker but have consented to see ads like the unobtrusive, respectful forms of advertisement known as “Acceptable Ads”—ones that fit the criteria set forth by the independent Acceptable Ads Committee.

AAX is devoted to knowing everything there is to know about ad filterers. In one previous study we looked into what makes this demographic unique, another study examined their purchasing habits, and our most recent study dug deep into ad filterer motivation: the reasons ad filterers avoid advertisements, and how and why those reasons change.

Our passion for all things ad filterer is why we’ve turned our attention to an issue that’s capturing everyone’s attention: ad filterers’ political profiles.

In other words: what party do American ad filterers’ affiliate themselves with? And beyond simple party distinctions:

• how do American ad filterers align with various political profiles?
• what roles do attributes like location, age, and education play?
• what are their stated values, and what adjectives do they feel describe them?

We consulted the trove of data that the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) keeps about internet behavior. This data is accumulated by actual users responding to questions, and GWI amends it on a frequent, rolling basis.

And we found out a lot.

American ad filterers—which GWI refers to as selective ad blocking users—are an eclectic bunch, and examining their political affiliation, their self-identified values, and the descriptors they feel best summarize them gave us a stunning amount of insight into this dynamic demographic.

In the service of looking at political profiles, we also got to revisit issues of location, age, and education—which we’d examined in previous years—and explore how demographics have shifted during the COVID era. All of the data we explore is from 2020 and 2021.

And we’ve used all these fascinating findings to compile a new study—American Ad Blocking Users’ Political Profile—available for free download in May 2022.

Why Block Ads? AAX’s New Study Investigates.

Posted on by AAX Team

There are some questions that haunt the ad space.

What motivates people to block ads? What are the reasons that users weigh before installing ad blockers? What factors influence these decisions?

That’s why we penned Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations— in order to get to the bottom of these issues. We consulted the treasure trove of data that the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) keeps about online behavior, and teased out answers to pressing questions including:

  • How has COVID-19 changed ad filterers attitudes towards ad blocking?
  • Does education level inform ad blocking behavior?
  • Have ad blocking behaviors changed over the last four years?
  • Is there a difference in the ways that generations view ad blocking?

And:

  • What are the main reasons that people block ads?

The questions get even more pressing when discussing the demographic of ad filterers. These are the 95% of users that have an ad blocker installed on their device but still consent to be served ads.

And it’s these users AAX zeroes in on in our latest study, Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations.

As AAX explored in our last study, ad filterers are a group with unsurpassed purchasing power and online activity. And, as we detailed in our first report, ad filterers lead the pack in terms of brand discovery and their appetite for digital content.

Interested in learning more about the motivations behind ad blocking? Just fill out the contact form below and Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations will be emailed to you—free of charge, of course.

Beyond black and white: welcome to the new listings

Posted on by AAX Team

AAX is pleased to be revising our vocabulary. In the name of both a) dismantling harmful stereotypes and b) enhancing clarity, we’ll be replacing the term “whitelist” with “allowlist” and “blacklist” with “blocklist.”

These new naming practices reflect a change that’s been occurring industry-wide. The last year has seen a period of sorely-needed cultural consideration regarding racism and prejudice, and how best to dismantle and work against them.

And that includes grappling with terms like “whitelist” and “blacklist.”

When the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) changed their term usage last spring, they explained that:

[…] there’s an issue with the terminology. It only makes sense if you equate white with ‘good, permitted, safe’ and black with ‘bad, dangerous, forbidden’. There are some obvious problems with this. So in the name of helping to stamp out racism in cyber security, we will avoid this casually pejorative wording on our website in the future. (Source)

This issue—of racism embedded in the language we use, often without thinking—is well past due for a reckoning. In a recent piece for AdExchanger, Andrew Kraft harkened back to a famous 1971 interview where Muhammad Ali considered loaded terms that framed “white” as “good” and “black” negatively, writing:

[…] he recalled that all the positive things he grew up with were white, from White Cloud tissue paper to the White House, while all the negative things, from the bad luck of a black cat to the term blackmail, were black. Nearly 50 years later, that linguistic measuring stick is alive and well. (Source)

We think that it’s time to change our vocabulary.

There’s an additional benefit to this terminology change. Terms like “whitelist” and “blacklist,” while understood within the industry, can be confusing to newcomers to the ad space. Replacing these terms with the more explanatory “allowlist” and “blocklist” makes these words instantly accessible: an allowlist allows, and a blocklist…blocks. If doing away with outdated terminology helps us communicate more effectively and succinctly, we consider that to be a bonus.

Because the words we use matter. And AAX is committed to working against racism in all forms, including at the linguistic level.

How COVID shaped ad blocking

Posted on by AAX Team

March 11, 2021 marked a grim milestone: one year since the World Health organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

Since then, our lives have changed in a myriad ways. Even putting the vital health- and healthcare-related issues aside, the past twelve months saw upheaval that touched every individual personally. Living rooms were turned into offices, classrooms, and yoga studios. Priorities were reshuffled, dogs were purchased, hair went un-cut.

And, of course, we’re all been very online.

We’re swapped movie theaters for streaming services (even more than in past years), concert venues for live-streams, and social activities basically now take place over a combination of video calls and social media.

Of course, thanks to massive and heroic vaccination efforts, things will change soon—but for now we’re living a highly digital existence.

So: how has all this time online shaped our attitudes towards ads? And have ad filterers in particular—the 95% of all ad blocking users who have an ad blocker installed but still consent to be served ads—changed their relationship to ad blockers?

We looked at data gleaned the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) keeps about internet behavior, examining in particular how answers to the question “Why do you use an ad blocker” changed between Q4 2019 and Q3 2020.

And what we found is interesting: there’s been a subtle shift away from issues of annoyance—specifically respondents choosing answers like “Ads are too intrusive” or “Too many ads are irrelevant.” But more people in general seem to choose answers that suggest changing priorities and principles, opting for answers such as “I try to avoid all ads wherever, whether on TV or online.”

There was also a noted shift away from responses that addressed browsing on the go, or away from an energy source. Answers like “To stop my device’s battery being drained” and “I want to stop my data allowance from being used up” both showed a marked decline in Q3 2020—unsurprisingl, given the fact that, for most people, a socket and Wi-Fi connection were never far away during the past year.

But in general, the differences between ad blocking motivation in Q4 2019 and Q3 2020 were less marked than one might imagine, given the tumultuous nature of the past year. Maybe this means that the post-vaccine re-opening we’re all eagerly anticipating will see us seamlessly re-integrating into something very close to the life we left behind last March.

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If you’re interested in learning more about ad filterer motivations and psychology, make sure to check out our forthcoming study, Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations, a study that examines, well, the reasons and motivations behind ad blocking habits.

Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations will be published in April, but we’ll be teasing its release with posts just like this one. And if you’re interested, check out some of our previous ground-breaking studies.

Last November we released Ad Filterers Online: Purchasing Habits and Media Consumption In The USA, which shed light on the subject of how ad filterers spend time online…and how they spend their hard-earned dollars.

And back in January of 2020 we published our groundbreaking study, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Ad Blocking Users,” which drew back the curtain on the youthful, affluent, and well-educated users that have ad blockers installed on their devices.

Surprising links: education and ad blocking

Posted on by AAX Team

In general, the more educated you are the more likely you are to turn to an ad blocker.

People who block ads—and especially ad filterers, the name given to the 95% of ad blocking users who have an ad blocker installed but also consent to be served respectful, non-intrusive ads—are a well-educated bunch. Whereas only 23.3% of non- ad blocking users held a university degree, and only 4.9% held a postgraduate degree, an impressive 27% of ad blockers held a university degree and 11.7% of ad filterers had a Masters or higher. (Source)

But that doesn’t mean that, within ad filterers as a demographic whole, there isn’t a range of education levels. Approximately 60% have either a high school degree or some amount of college education, and more than a quarter hold a university degree. The only outlier is high school: only 0.9% percent of ad filterers fail to graduate.

This made us curious. We wanted to know whether motivations for ad blocking differed by education levels…or if they remained constant whether or not a user had a high school education or a PhD.

So we consulted the trove of data that the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) keeps about internet behavior. This data is accumulated by actual users responding to questions, and GWI amends it on a frequent, rolling basis.

To streamline the data we looked exclusively at users with a high school degree, a university degree, or a postgraduate degree. We also focused specifically on the top five reasons for ad blocking. And we found out a lot.

When examining the main reasons users gave ad blocking, we noticed that those ad filterers with a high school education replied affirmatively to more statements than those ad filterers with a university degree or a postgraduate degree. Across the board, percentages were higher—from “There are too many ads on the internet” to “To speed up loading times.”

The answer that was most overwhelmingly affirmative? When asked “Why do you use an ad blocker?” 49.5% of ad filterers with a high school education answered “Ads sometimes contain viruses or bugs.” When asked the same question, only 45.3% percent of users with a university degree and 40.9% of users with a postgraduate degree answered “Ads sometimes contain viruses or bugs.”

There was one category that stood out: the one that was favored by those with a university degree. “Ads are too intrusive” was an answer from 46.8% of university graduates compared with 456% of high school graduates and 44.4% of respondents with a postgraduate degree.

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If you’re interested in learning more about ad filterer motivations and psychology, make sure to check out our forthcoming study, Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations, a study that examines, well, the reasons and motivations behind ad blocking habits.

Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations will be published in April, but we’ll be teasing its release with posts just like this one. And if you’re interested, check out some of our previous ground-breaking studies.

Last November we released Ad Filterers Online: Purchasing Habits and Media Consumption In The USA, which shed light on the subject of how ad filterers spend time online…and how they spend their hard-earned dollars.

And back in January of 2020 we published our groundbreaking study, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Ad Blocking Users,” which drew back the curtain on the youthful, affluent, and well-educated users that have ad blockers installed on their devices.

Motivations for ad blocking across gender lines

Posted on by AAX Team

Popular psychology tells us that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But when it comes to the reasons they block ads, both XX and XY chromosome-havers are solidly together on planet Earth.

In teasing out the reasons that ad filterers—the name given to the 95% of ad blocking users who have an ad blocker installed on their device but still consent to be served ads—decided to curate the ads they’re served in the first place, we wanted to look at a variety of factors. Did a person’s age impact their reasons for ad blocking? Did their education level?

And…did gender?

As it turns out, there’s not a clear pink/blue divide when it comes to the motivations for ad blocking. Men and women seem to be largely in agreement when it comes to the reasons they have for ad blocking…although there are slight differences that we found interesting to tease out.

Speed and intrusiveness: largely male concerns

When we looked at the top five reasons for ad blocking, male respondents were more likely than female respondents to choose the answers “Ads are too intrusive” and “To speed up loading times” when asked “Why do you use an ad blocker?” 48.1% expressed concerns about intrusiveness compared to 44% of women, and 45.8% were worried about ads’ adverse effects on loading times compared to just 40.4% of women.

Unity of opinion?

What is perceived as a browsing experience cluttered with so many ads resulted in a moment of peace and understanding in the battle of the sexes. “There are too many ads on the internet” was the answer given by roughly half of both men and women.

Men and women agreed in almost equal percentages—52.2% of men and 53% of women—that a main point of concern was the sheer quantity of ads online.

Women are aggravated by irrelevant ads and virus threats

When asked “Why do you use an ad blocker,” female ad filterers were most concerned about two things: “Too many ads are annoying or irrelevant” and “Ads sometimes contain viruses or bugs.” 49.4% of women were concerned about the safety issues of ads and viruses/bugs, compared to only 45.4% of men.

But it’s worth noting that the most important issue for both men and women was annoyance/irrelevance. 61.1% of women cited this as the most pressing concern. And, while a slightly smaller percentage of men were troubled by annoyance and irrelevance, it was, at 58.8%, still the most popular response given.

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If you’re interested in learning more about ad filterer motivations and psychology, make sure to check out our forthcoming study, Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations, a study that examines, well, the reasons and motivations behind ad blocking habits.

Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations will be published in April, but we’ll be teasing its release with posts just like this one. And if you’re interested, check out some of our previous ground-breaking studies.

Last November we released Ad Filterers Online: Purchasing Habits and Media Consumption In The USA, which shed light on the subject of how ad filterers spend time online…and how they spend their hard-earned dollars.

And back in January of 2020 we published our groundbreaking study, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Ad Blocking Users,” which drew back the curtain on the youthful, affluent, and well-educated users that have ad blockers installed on their devices.