Tag: ad tech

Ad filterers—the 95% of ad blocking users that have an ad blocker installed on their device but consent to be served ads—are a demographic that skews young.

But because ad filterers make up such a massive group of people (95% is a pretty big percentage!) it’s important not to overlook the older segment of the population when looking at motivations for ad blocking.

So we looked at everyone from age sixteen up through retirement age; from the members of Gen Z up through Baby Boomers. And what we found as we also looked through the motivations of Millennials, Xennials, and Gen X’ers, is thought provoking.

Gen Z’ers have more concerns than Millennials

When we examined the top five most common reasons for ad blocking, Gen Z’ers (ages 16-24) were ahead of Millennials (ages 25-34) in terms of voicing concerns about ads.

Where this was most apparent was in the question of annoyance and irrelevance. When asked “Why do you use an ad blocker?” 60.5% of Gen Z respondents replied “Too many ads are annoying or irrelevant,” compared to only 53.7% of Millennials.

But Gen Z led the pack when it came to all other issues, responding in higher percentages than Millennials with the answers: “Ads sometimes contain bugs or viruses,” “There are too many ads on the internet,” “Ads are too intrusive,” and “To speed up loading times.”

Baby Boomers are annoyed and Gen X’ers feel the need for speed

An interesting finding that appears when looking across these five generations is that Millennials (25-34) and Xennials (35-44) show less concern across the board than those people both younger (Gen Z, ages 16-24) and older (Gen X, ages 45-54; Baby Boomers, ages 55-64).

This of course doesn’t mean that Millennials and Xennials aren’t using ad blockers. They are, in fact, one of the age groups using ad blockers the most. However, they’re not reporting overwhelmingly on certain pain points the way other generations are. This might have something to do with the Xennial and Millenials relationship to the internet. They grew up with the internet and the online ad space in many ways, cutting their teeth with AOL account and evolving with the technology. Their understanding of online ads has shifted, and they’re seen things get better—after all, the days of the ever-pervasive sparkly banner ad are over!

When it comes to Gen X’ers, the concern centers around speed. 45.7% responded to the question “Why do you use an ad blocker?” with the answer “To speed up loading times,” compared with 43% of Xennials, 44.8% of Baby Boomers, 41.6% of Millennials, and 42.6% of Gen Z’ers. This concern could be a holdover—as people who came of age in the era of dial-up, speed is a concern that still resonates.

And Baby Boomers, like Gen Z, feel strongly about ads being “annoying or irrelevant.” They responded in greater percentages with this answer than any other demographic, with 70.8% answering “Why do you use an ad blocker?” “Too many ads are annoying or irrelevant.” It’s clear that this is an age group with resources and disposable income, willing to see ads that would be relevant to their interests…but that they’re being inundated with annoying advertisements.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.

The world has changed a lot since 2017.

Even setting aside the world-shaking COVID-19 pandemic and all that came with it—the tragedy on a massive scale, the blows to the economy, the reshaping of the way we live, work, and educate—things are very different now then they were four years ago.

To think back to the second quarter of 2017 is to remember a different era: one where Donald Trump had just been elected president, TikTok had yet to be launched outside of mainland China, and the hashtag #MeToo wasn’t yet synonymous with fighting sexual abuse and harassment. In 2017 Prince Harry was a bachelor, Black Lives Matter hadn’t yet grown into an international phenomenon, Greta Thunberg was an unknown student in Sweden, and the streaming revolution had yet to begin.

Our question: in the midst of all this change, how did the motivations and reasons for blocking ads change? The period of time between the second quarter of 2017 and Q3 2020 was full of upheaval, innovation, and reckonings…but did that have an impact on the habits of the ad filtering demographic?

We looked at GlobalWebIndex (GWI) data that examines the reasons that ad filterers (defined by the GWI as “users who have blocked ads in the past month but discover brands or products through ads seen online and have clicked on an online ad in the past month”) choose to block ads.

And we noticed a few key ways in which ad filterer motivation changed between Q2 2017 and Q3 2020.

Fewer affirmatives overall.

The most notable difference between 2017 and 2020 was an overall decrease in affirmative answers across the top twelve reasons for ad blocker use. For example, 61.3% of respondents said that they blocked ads because “Too many ads on the internet are annoying or irrelevant” back in 2017, compared to only 57% in 2020.

And while the percentage difference between the years wasn’t always so dramatic—29.1% of respondents agreed that “Ads might compromise my online privacy” in 2017, compared to 28.9% in 2020, for example—the trend continued across the board.

The outlier: data allowance

However, there was one answer that netted more affirmatives in 2020 than in 2017. When asked why they used an adblocker, 18.7% of respondents in 2020 agreed with the statement “I want to stop my data allowance from being used up,” up from 16.2% in 2017.

This underlines a trend we’ve observed since 2017: more and more ad blocking is occurring on mobile devices, where data and data allowances are a subject of concern.

The biggest loser? Loading times

Another data point jumped out at us, simply because it represented such a stark change. In 2017, 49.7% of users stated that they used ad blockers “To speed up loading times.”

However, four years later, that number had fallen to 39.3%. Speeding up loading times, which used to concern nearly half of all ad filterers, suddenly appears to be a lesser issue.

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.

Our new study, Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations will be published in April, but we’ll be teasing its release with a number of posts (like this one!).

We’ve talked a bit about the primary reasons that the American public blocks ads—it’s all about frustration.

We also covered the secondary reasons for ad blocking—i.e. complaints about ads getting between users and their ideal browsing experience.

And we’ve touched on tertiary reasons, which hit upon the pain points of both browsing experience (avoiding ads before watching video clips) and set principles (trying to avoid personalized ads, as well as all ads whenever possible).

It’s time to turn our attention to the final reasons that ad filterers (otherwise known as the 95% of people who have ad blockers installed on their devices but consent to be served non-intrusive, respectful ads) turned to ad blocking in the first place. And don’t be fooled—although these were overall the least popular reasons for ad blocking, they were still selected as reasons by significant and large percentages of the ad filtering population.

When asked, “Why do you use an ad blocker?”…

– 29.6% of respondents answered “Ads might compromise my online privacy.”

– 25.4% of respondents answered “To stop my device’s battery from being drained.”

– and 19.1% of respondents answered “I want to stop my data allowance from being used up.”

What unites all of these issues is that they stray from the browsing experience. The concerns here are about the perception of what ads can possibly do, both in terms of affecting the actual hardware (draining the battery) or the cost of maintaining the device (the data allowance).

And then, of course, comes the subject of privacy.

Back in March 2020, we wrote a piece called “What are some challenges facing the international ad market,” which took an in-depth look into the hot-button topics being discussed at the Adzine Adtrader Conference in Berlin.

Central among these topics was privacy, which Dennis Buchheim, Executive Vice President and General Manager of IAB Tech Lab, described in his keynote lecture as having “a pervasive impact on what we do.” In fact, privacy concerns were singled out as being the single most important issue facing the ad space, and an important issue especially when it comes to user security and trust.

So it’s no wonder that almost a third of respondents agreed that privacy was a reason that ad filterers chose to install an ad blocker on their device.

* * *

Interested in learning more about ad filterers? 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.

As recently as 2017, think pieces proliferated with headlines like “Why personalised advertising is your lifeline in an age of ad blockers.” The idea? That people wouldn’t block ads if they were served ads that were relevant to their own experiences.

But that’s not the whole story.

As we discussed in our previous posts in this series, the major reasons the ad filtering public turned to the practice of ad blocking have to do with the irrelevance and sheer number of ads cluttering up their browsing experience./p>

However, fear of personalization (or checking “To stop ads being personalized based on my browsing history” when asked “Why do you use an ad blocker?”) ranked #9 out of the Top 12 reasons people block ads. True, that’s not exactly topping the list…but that doesn’t mean it should be discounted. 29.8% of ad filterers selected personalization as a reason for ad blocking.

As for the #7 and #8 reasons behind ad blocking, they are, respectively:

– “To avoid having to see video ads before watching clips/shows” (36.4%)

– ““I try to avoid all ads wherever, whether on TV or online” (34.6%)

These answers are divided in terms of central motivation: the reasons behind the reasons given.

The answer “To avoid having to see video ads before watching clips/shows” reflects the fact that some respondents see ads as being detrimental to their browsing experience, or ads being a source of annoyance. This is aligned with some of the primary reasons given for blocking ads, such as “There are too many ads on the internet” (the second most popular reason given) or “[I block ads] to speed up loading times” (the fifth most popular reason).

But “I try to avoid all ads wherever, whether on TV or online,” stands out because it suggests a blanket avoidance that has less to do with the ins and outs of user experience, and more to do with a general practice or philosophy.

Trying to avoid ads at all times is a move made out of principle, one that’s more aligned with the early days of ad blocking, where a scorched earth policy—No ads, ever—reigned supreme. However, this mindset is primarily a relic of an earlier time. Today, 95% of people with ad blockers are engaging in a practice called “ad filtering.” Ad filterers consent to be served ads—as long as they’re respectful, non-intrusive ads.

These ad filterers are who we’ve examined in our forthcoming Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations, a study that examines, well, the reasons and motivations behind ad blocking habits.

And that’s not all. We also look at how ad filterers’ motivations and reasons have shifted over time, how they differ between sub-demographics, and why all this matters.

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.

Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations will be published in April, but we’ll be teasing its release with a number of posts just like this one.

In our last post, we looked at the top three reasons why ad filterers—the 95% of ad blocking users who opt to be served less-intrusive ads—give for ad blocking.

But, never satisfied with just scratching the surface of an issue, we wanted to look a little deeper, examining even more reasons why users choose to install ad blockers on their devices.

And what we found was that users are motivated by browsing and user experience. First, the numbers. When asked why they use an ad blocker…

… 46.2% answered “Ads are too intrusive.”

… 43.3% said “To speed up loading times.”

… and 37% agreed that “Ads take up too much screen space.

First of all, these answers represent a large percentage of ad filterers, ranging from more than ⅓ to slightly less than ½ of users. That’s too significant a segment of the population to ignore.

Secondly, when we take a look at the reasons given, a pattern begins to emerge. Ad filterers can see ads as compromising browsing and user experience.

That’s the common ground shared by the statements “Ads are too intrusive” and “Ads take up too much space,” the fourth and fifth most common motivation for ad blocking. And the sixth— “To speed up loading times”—speaks to a perception of ads further diminishing the ability to browse.

But this pressing issue of browsing and user experience runs deeper. After all, two of the top three reasons for ad blocking, which were explored in depth in our last post, also have to do with browsing and user experience. When the segment of the population that answered “Too many ads are annoying or irrelevant” and “There are too many ads on the internet”—59% 52.6% of respondents, respectively—are considered, the picture of ad blocking motivations becomes even more crystal clear.

Ads are seen as negatively affecting browsing and user experience. That makes it a matter of urgency to start addressing the annoyance that users have with the way they’re currently being served ads.

That’s one of the reasons that we compiled Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations, a study that examines, well, the reasons and motivations behind ad blocking habits. We’re especially interested in why ad filterers—users that curate their own ad experiences by opting to be served some but not all advertisements—choose ad blocking.

And that’s not all. We also look at how these motivations and reasons have shifted over time, how they differ between sub-demographics, and why all this matters.

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.

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.

Now, we’re excited to announce our new study is slated to be published this spring. After spending time researching in the vaults that the GlobalWebIndex (GWI) keeps about internet user behavior, we’ve compiled Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the study examines, well, the reasons and motivations behind ad blocking habits. We’re especially interested in why ad filterers—users that curate their own ad experiences by opting to be served some but not all advertisements—choose ad blocking.

And that’s not all. We also look at how these motivations and reasons have shifted over time, how they differ between sub-demographics, and why all this matters.

The top three reasons to block ads

The primary reason that the ad filtering demographic blocks ads is as follows:

– 59% find that “Too many ads are annoying or irrelevant.”
– 52.6% agree with the statement “There are too many ads on the internet.”
– 47.3% are worried because “Ads sometimes contain viruses or bugs.”

While all of these issues are clearly of concern, it’s notable that the primary reason—”Too many ads are annoying or irrelevant”—leads the pack. This ad blocking behavior is tied to emotion and frustration, as well as the feeling that the ads being served are simply of not the best quality or relevance.

So what makes these annoying ads so annoying? According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the most annoying ad elements are:

“Ads that block content, long video ads before short videos, ads that follow down the page as the user scrolls. [And] consumers that use ad blockers are even more annoyed by these ad elements, especially auto-start ads.” (Source)

This suggests something interesting: the idea that non-intrusive and non-obnoxious ads would be considered fine (or even of interest!) by this demographic. It also suggests that ads that are considered more pertinent to the users’ lives and interests would no longer be lumped into the same undesirable category as “annoying” ads.

There’s also no denying that this sentiment is tied to the next one thematically. The statement “There are too many ads on the internet” is both a statement that’s referring directly to a number and an expression of frustration that can arise when ads are…annoying or irrelevant. After all, any number of annoying, irrelevant ads would be considered too many.

And of course privacy and security concerns, which are always a hot topic where user satisfaction is concerned, are among the top three reasons for ad blocking. Additionally, there’s a clear connection between “annoying and irrelevant ads” and worries about “viruses and bugs.” One of the more serious reasons these ads are so annoying is because of user anxiety surrounding security—and that anxiety is especially directed towards ads that seem suspicious or irrelevant.

From now until Why Block Ads? Behind User Reasons and Motivations is published in the spring, we’ll be scheduling regular posts that look a little more deeply into the study’s insights.

Stay tuned!