The ad blocking apocalypse: it's not happening
What do we say to "adblock apocalypse"? Not today.
In recent years advertisers and publishers have been worryingly following the growth of ad blockers. Preparing the reports, filing the complaints and generally waiting for the true apocalypse in the industry. However, there are no reasons for such concern. Mashable has recently published an article, which we want to share with you.
Indeed, there is nothing to be hysterical about: ad blockers' growth has slowed down dramatically. Some data show that in large countries the number of users, who install desktop ad blockers, remained at the same level or even declined slightly in recent months. At the same time, mobile advertising apocalypse that worried the industry so much is not happening and not going to, according to Mashable.
There are various ad blocking tools for mobile devices and nevertheless, their share is tiny.
If this trend continues, one can conclude that ad blockers will remain popular in certain circles, but it will not reach the scale of the crisis.
Eric Franchi (co-founder of Undertone advertising agency) believes that "ad blockers lost in 2016."
Perhaps ad blockers for smartphones will gain sudden wide popularity, but for now, advertisers and websites have hope.
Analysts are predicting a steady increase in the number of ad blockers' users, which at the same time won't bring anxiety. Tom Triscani, CEO of Labmatik advertising agency, says the global growth of ad blockers has already reached the highest threshold and will now grow slowly in the coming years. The forecast predicts that the userbase of ad blockers will stop growing by 2025 and will be around 7% of all Internet users by then.
Experts do not fully understand why the number of desktop installations has reduced. Perhaps we have reached a point when everyone who is aware of ad blockers and would like to install them - has already done so. It is also possible that there was some influence because of opposition from the sites.
No apocalypse then?
It looks so. When Apple has opened the door for content blockers in mobile Safari, there was a real hysteria and prediction of ad block apocalypse.But more than a year has passed and the number of mobile blockers users is so small in Western countries, that PageFair (main blockers' opponent) hasn't even included them in its report on ad blocking situation.
Ben Roodman from AppsFlyer mobile ad analytics firm says that ad blockers did not have any notable impact in the mobile space. “I don’t think many people are going out and discovering new ad blockers,” Roodman said. “They’re mostly just going straight to Facebook.”
Mashable believes that this is due to the fact that there are quite a few good ad blockers for mobile devices. Commonly they only work in Safari, and even less of them can block ads in apps.
What do you think? How popular do you believe the ad blockers for mobile devices will be in the nearest future?
