Ad block usage grew 41% in the last 12 months

Aug 13, 2015 10:52 GMT  ·  By

The number of people using ad blockers has gone up 41% in the second quarter of 2015 compared to the same period of last year, totaling 198 million monthly active users, as a joint market study from Adobe and PageFair reveals.

Examining the gathered data, researchers found out that 16% of the US' online users utilize one form or another of ad blocking software, as it was recorded during the second quarter of 2015.

This accounts for 45 million MAUs (monthly active users), a 48% rise compared to Q2 of 2014.

During the same period, the number of Europeans using ad blockers also grew to 77 million MAUs, a rise of 35% compared to Q2 of 2014.

Most people that block ads in the United States live in Oregon, while the lowest ad blocking rates were recorded in Washington DC.

One in three Greeks blocks ads in their browser

In Europe, Greeks seem to be the most efficient when it comes to blocking ads, with more than a third of the entire online population using this type of software, while Slovakians have the lowest recorded ad blocking rates.

Users with ad blockers installed already cost online marketers $21.8 billion (€19.6 billion) in the first half of 2015. This figure is a little bit disparate if you take into account it represents 14% of the total ad revenue, while the 198 million users that utilize ad blockers are only 6% of the entire online population.

Broken down into industries, the research showed that users who visit gaming, social networking, and tech websites are the ones that tend to install ad blockers the most, while users who visit real estate, charitable organizations, and government websites have the least interest in blocking ads.

While the percentage of Firefox users with ad blockers grew from 34 million in 2013 to 48 million in 2015, Chrome saw a growth from 44 million to 126 million.

The good news for advertisers is that only 1.6% of all mobile users used ad blockers, a technology still very poorly developed on smartphones and tablets.

Asked why they install ad blocking software, half of the users said they didn't trust the ad delivery networks with their personal data, while only 2 out of 5 users felt they see too many online ads on a daily basis.

Ad block usage across browsers
Ad block usage across browsers

Ad Block usage in the last 12 months (9 Images)

Global ad block growth
Ad block software usage in the USAd block software usage in Europe
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