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Majority of Americans now use ad blockers
- dabacaba 2y agoThis link was already posted three times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39877496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39877496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39849944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39849944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39846010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39846010
- leereeves 2y agoMy favorite part: > 66 percent of experienced advertisers ... use ad blockers
- fluidcruft 2y agoCould make sense if they're trying to see what methods make it past blockers. I probably would do that if I were in that industry.
- rchaud 2y agoIt's normal for people at FB/IG to not allow their children to use those apps. This is the same principle. TV ad execs probably have TiVo at home.
- BossHogg 2y agoFavorite part and best part. When the large majority of advertisers block advertisements there's really no room to complain when anyone else does the same.
- ramesh31 2y agoThis plus the third-party cookie apocalypse means advertisers are going to need to seriously reconsider the entire approach of personalization and targeting. For all of the billions and billions of dollars poured into ad-tech, I really don't buy that this stuff is any more effective than manually chosen or page contextual display ads. Maybe for juicing a few short term points on an A/B test, sure. But has anyone seriously verified that any of this stuff is effective versus control over the long term?
- vundercind 2y agoI suspect it’s very valuable for a small proportion of campaigns that very carefully use its features and are thoughtfully designed, and the same or worse than traditional advertising for the rest. I further suspect a whole lot of the ones it’s very-good for are scams, or scam-adjacent.
- cassianoleal 2y agoEven for those campaigns it might be cheaper to cast a wider net using a non-personalised ad scheme.
- wing-_-nuts 2y ago>the third-party cookie apocalypse Expand?
- rchaud 2y agoMost browsers now do not allow 3rd parties to set cookies when you visit a first-party site. By end of 2024, Google Chrome will block all 3rd party cookies completely. https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/3pcd https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/3pcd
- rchaud 2y agoCookies are as good as dead already, and have mostly been replaced with: - native apps with device-level Mobile Advertising ID exposed - login walls (e.g. Twitter) - browser fingerprinting
- ramesh31 2y agoFirst party audiencing has indeed been used for a long time now. It works... to an extent. But it requires significant opt-in and will never replace what cross-site cookies could do. Same for fingerprinting.
- withinboredom 2y agoCookies are very much alive (still the best way to do CSRF protection). I think you mean 3rd party cookies?
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoThe original report: https://www.ghostery.com/blog/privacy-report-advertisers-and-adblockers https://www.ghostery.com/blog/privacy-report-advertisers-and.... Curiously, only "76% of experienced cybersecurity professionals and 72% of programmers also reported using an adblocker, compared to just 52% of Americans."
- mrmetanoia 2y ago[flagged]
- miohtama 2y agoIf you know how the sausage is made you don’t want to eat the sausage.
- bhhaskin 2y agoI don't use an ad blocker at work because I have had it affect my work and lose time trying to figure out why something isn't working right.
- orev 2y agoIf you’re a developer that’s very important information, since if you deploy an app that breaks with ad blockers, it’s not going to work for 52% of users.
- aaomidi 2y agoI was once a security engineer at Google. So many people really believed ad blocking is like, actual theft. Got into an argument about that with my manager once lol.
- ffsm8 2y ago> So many people really believed ad blocking is like, actual theft. If copyright infringement is considered theft, then AdBlock would've to be considered akin to theft too. They're inherently the same thing. You're consuming the content without providing the expected revenue to the owner. From my perspective, neither can be considered theft. Which is why I use AdBlock, too. But if either is theft, then the other would've to be too. You could very well argue that AdBlock is technically worse then copyright infringement, because you're still using the bandwidth of the provider. With "piracy" you're sharing the content through other avenues.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoIs it sad that it's now a pet peeve of mine when I see a colleague sharing their screen over Teams/Zoom and observe that they have ABP installed rather than uBlock Origin? I mean, it's one thing to see colleagues with no adblockers--they just need to be told the Good News. But those ABP users...they chose incorrectly!
- airstrike 2y agoFWIW I'm an AdNauseam guy... did I also choose incorrectly??
- NegativeLatency 2y agohttps://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
- jqpabc123 2y ago"Personalized" advertising is just plain dumb --- and it is only a matter of time before advertisers are forced to reach the same obvious conclusion as consumers.
- dotcoma 2y agoI agree, but I've been waiting for this moment to arrive for over a decade...
- jqpabc123 2y agoIt's coming. Progress is being made. A decade ago, the majority of Americans weren't using ad blockers.
- dotcoma 2y agoThis is true, but I predicted we'd get to 50% much faster than we did.
- jqpabc123 2y agoRemember that half the public is of below average intelligence.
- snapplebobapple 2y agoOnly if the distribution isn't skewed. It might be substantially more than half...
- jqpabc123 2y agoYes, the technically correct phrase is "below median" --- but a lot of people don't understand the difference so why bother?
- riku_iki 2y ago
- skilled 2y agoIsn’t this extremely misleading based on the number of people they surveyed? That number is only 2,000 according to this PDF: https://ghostery.cdn.prismic.io/ghostery/ZgP8q7LRO5ile652_Ghostery_ThePrivacyPulseReport_2024.pdf https://ghostery.cdn.prismic.io/ghostery/ZgP8q7LRO5ile652_Gh...
- klez 2y agoIsn't that how surveys work?
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoAnd from what I can tell, Censuswide is a credible market researcher.
- skilled 2y ago2000 is 0.0007% of 260M adults living in the USA. “Majority of Americans” is a bit off the rails, imo.
- EA-3167 2y ago2000 is a pretty generous sample size if it's a well constructed poll, and of course entirely useless otherwise.
- tzs 2y agoThe margin of error when using a random sample of 2000 people out of a population of 260M is less than 2.19% with a 95% confidence level. You are probably making the common mistake of thinking that the larger the population the bigger a sample needs to be to accurately poll. That is true for lower populations but the "sample needed vs. population size" curve is asymptotic. For example, suppose we want to determine what percent of people believe X, with a 5% margin of error and a 95% confidence level. Here's a table of the random sample size needed for various populations: Sample Population 80 100 278 1 000 370 10 000 383 100 000 385 1 000 000 385 10 000 000 ... ... 385 ∞
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- noashavit 2y ago"Personalized" ads do move the needle. It just depends on the audience. eCommerce brand, for example, and DTC companies use them on the regular to drive consumers to action and complete that purchase. For more technical audiences, cookie based personalization doesn't really work, and contextual advertising has higher conversions.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago"use" is a funny word here, because the experience of using an ad blocker is very passive. It's not like you need to click a button to enable ad blocking on each page. Once you install the extension, it just happens. I wager a lot of adblock users are non-technical people who don't even know they're using adblocking, but just had it installed by the local techie in their life to make both their lives easier.
- dotcoma 2y agoSure, but then again, most users are your mom and your uncle. Replace with "have an ad-blocker on their browser" if you wish; or "on their computer", as they would probably say. Tell you more: most won't even know the difference between an ad-blocker and an anti ad-tracker, but this is exactly the battle that publishers and advertisers are losing: half the US Internet users are now "not reachable" by their ads.
- notarget137 2y agoSounds like advertisement is something that people usually don't want to see or click on. I wonder why?
- aaomidi 2y agoAdblocking is a security necessity. The FBI has recommended the use of adblockers as well. Do your family a favor and install UBO on their devices.
- karaterobot 2y ago> Feel free to add us [The Register] to your white list if you do use an ad blocker. We have full-time ops staff whose job it is around the clock to keep our sites clean of anything naughty. Nah, I think I'll keep it on.
- jocoda 2y agoMy objection to online advertising is that these are being served to us by third parties, not the site that we are visiting. If the site I visit takes ownership and responsibility for the ads it shows, then I'm ok with that. But that's not what happens. If there is any issue whatsoever the site palms off the responsibility - "not my fault". Either own it or foff. edit - grammar
- brycewray 2y agoStill true, but now for different reasons... https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/04/11/advertising/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/04/11/advertising/