Growth of ad blocking adds to publishers’ worries

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) addressed the issue during its annual leadership meeting in February, and now says it’s a high priority for 2015.

“Ad blocking is something we’re seeing increase domestically,” said the IAB’s vice president of technology and ad operations, Scott Cunningham. The main reasons users choose to block ads are for security and privacy, a general dislike of advertising and the fact that webpages often load considerably faster without ads on them, Mr. Cunningham said.

According to research by Adobe and ad blocking measurement service PageFair, approximately five per cent of Internet users globally used ad blocking tools during the second quarter of 2014, up from around three per cent for the same period in 2013.

That growth shows no signs of slowing, according to PageFair CEO Sean Blanchfield. He estimated that desktop ad blocking will probably be up 50 per cent from the second quarter a year ago through the end of the current quarter.

Source: WSJ Blogs

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