Ad blocking is the nemesis of the news and ad industries. But, despite growing efforts by publishers to combat the practice, it's probably not going away any time soon.
Market research group eMarketer today estimated that 27 percent of internet users in the UK—more than 14 million people— will be using ad blockers by the end of next year. That's up from this year's estimate of 20.5 percent and nearly double the estimate for last year (14 percent).
“There’s no doubting that ad blocking is now a very real issue for advertisers," eMarketer senior analyst Bill Fisher said. "Next year, over a quarter of the people they're trying to reach will be willfully making themselves unreachable.”
The prediction mirrors other reports that ad blocker usage is growing. Last year, Adobe and Pagefair released a report that found that nearly 200 million people around the world use some form of ad blocker, costing publishers $22 billion in lost ad revenue in 2015.
Given how much money is at stake, it's not surprising that some publishers have started to push back. Some prevent ad-blocking users from reading their articles altogether. Others, including WIRED, require readers to "whitelist" their sites to make ads viewable or else pay for a subscription. French newspapers Le Monde, L'Equipe, and Le Parisien have all experimented with ways to curtail ad block users, as have US publishers such as The New York Times, and Forbes. In Germany, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Axel Springer have gone so far as to challenge major ad blockers in court, so far without success.
At the same time, some publishers at least are trying to show their audiences that they're sensitive to concerns over tracking and the frustration and irritation of intrusive ads. In part, this has meant seeking to prioritize other ways of making money, such as advertorial—so-called native ads—and subscriptions. Because, hey, they're better than pop-up windows.
Says Fisher, "The good news is that numbers like this have forced those within the industry to think long and hard about what it is that they need to do better."
