It looks like ad-blocking software is costing website money. A recent study showed that the use of these kinds of ad-blocking applications is expected to cost websites around $21.8 billion worldwide in 2015.
The study was conducted by PageFair, an Ireland-based consultancy firm and Adobe. The research revealed that the number of people who use this kind of software on the Internet has increased 41 percent in the last year, to a number of 198 million users.
The research claims that even though people have embraced the idea of blocking the ads found online, they might not understand that this could hurt the websites that rely on the revenue from ads. These losses are expected to rise even further, at more than $41 billion in 2016.
Sean Blanchfield, chief executive at PageFair said that it is a tragedy that users who employ ad blocking software are the cause of losses in the lines of multi-billion dollars for the websites that they enjoy spending time on. With the fact that ad blocking is shifting to mobile devices as well, there is a threat that the model of business that has guaranteed the open Web for twenty years is going to collapse.
People have the possibility to install these applications on some browsers, like Google Chrome which block most of the ads. A similar application is predicted to come to Apple devices with the release of the new iOS later this year.
In the United States market alone, ads that have been blocked resulted in losses of around $5.8 billion in 2014. Adobe and PageFair discovered that this year the losses are estimated at around $10.7 billion.
The director of product marketing at Adobe, Campbell Foster said that he hopes the recent report brings a little light to the online environment. He added in a statement that people, most of them at least, accept the trade that comes “free”, in the lines of giving out information about themselves in exchange for being able to watch movies, TV shows, have access to news articles and services but they do not agree with advertising that is irrelevant, annoying, intrusive or even creepy.
The report claims that blocking too many ads may result in the overall disappearance of the websites the users enjoy, as they starve these platforms of their revenues and eventually leave them with no other options than to completely close down their businesses.
Image Source: wall-street.com
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