Rise in ad blocking software resulting in revenue losses of $21.8bn

$21.8 billion in advertising revenues will be lost in 2015 due to ad blocking software, a new report by PageFair has shown. According to the study the number of ad block users worldwide has increased by 41 per cent in the past 12 months, with now 198 million monthly active users.

Ad blocking is a software that acts like a firewall between the web browser and all known ad servers. It blocks the majoirty of ads automatically on all websites and is effective against almost all ad formats.

In the US alone, ad blocking grew by 48 per cent between Q2 2014 and Q2 2015. In Europe it grew by 35 per cent in the past year growing to 77 million users. This means that the global cost of ad blocking is expected to reach $41.4 billion by 2016.

The report further explains that ad blocking, which has been concentrated on desktop browsers, is now spreading to mobile in Asia. This trend will likely accelerate globally in September when the ability to block ads is introduced to iOS.

Sean Blanchfield, CEO and co-founder at PageFair, commented: “It is tragic that ad block users are inadvertently inflicting multi-billion dollar losses on the very websites they most enjoy. With ad blocking going mobile, there’s an eminent threat that the business model that has supported the open web for two decades is going to collapse.”

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