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Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

theregister.com

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Re: Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

#21

Post by lordnacho »

skilled wrote: post #9

Isn’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_Gh...

Imagine you land from another planet, and you discover that humans come in two major varieties.

How many of the 8 billion people would you need to survey to discover that roughly half were male?

It actually doesn't depend on the population. You could have landed 1000 years ago when the population was much smaller, and carry out a survey with the same number of samples, coming to the same conclusion.

Re: Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

#23

Post by rchaud »

ramesh31 wrote: post #4

This 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 seri…

Cookies 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

Re: Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

#24

Post by IncreasePosts »

"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.

Re: Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

#25

Post by skilled »

klez wrote: post #13
skilled wrote: post #9

Isn’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_Gh...

Isn't that how surveys work?

2000 is 0.0007% of 260M adults living in the USA.

“Majority of Americans” is a bit off the rails, imo.

Re: Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

#26

Post by rchaud »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #14
ramesh31 wrote: post #4

This 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 seri…

>the third-party cookie apocalypse Expand?

Most 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

Re: Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

#27

Post by EA-3167 »

skilled wrote: post #25
klez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that how surveys work?

2000 is 0.0007% of 260M adults living in the USA. “Majority of Americans” is a bit off the rails, imo.

2000 is a pretty generous sample size if it's a well constructed poll, and of course entirely useless otherwise.

Re: Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

#28

Post by ramesh31 »

rchaud wrote: post #23
ramesh31 wrote: post #4

This 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 seri…

Cookies 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

First 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.

Re: Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

#30

Post by dotcoma »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #24

"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.

Sure, 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.

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