Online Ad Blocking in the UK Statistics etc - Podcast of talk from Brighton SEO

0:02 I've got a lot to get through so I'll just have to get stuck in okay so what is ad blocking Wikipedia defines ad blocking as a type of software or less commonly a computer hardware device that can remove or alter advertising content from a web page website or mobile app okay the stats where are we today in the United Kingdom so the most recent stats I could find are from February 2020 which suggests according to a poll

0:31 conducted by ugab on behalf of the Internet advertising Bureau UK is that around 25% of all people in in the United Kingdom surveyed have ever downloaded an ad blocker and are currently using one and the reported ad blocking levels from that survey have been relatively stable for the past four years so the breakdown regarding devices 21% of online adults in the United Kingdom

1:05 use ad bloggers on desktops or laptops but it's worth noting that according to audience measurement less than 20% of the time spent online in that territory is via those devices compared to 10% on smartphone and in terms of demographics the 18 to 24s Remain the most likely ad group to have installed an ad blocker however this decreased significantly over the previous year to

1:35 2020 so in practice this is the the the default settings of the adlock plus uh browser plugin which is a very popular um ad blocker and the default setting is that you allow acceptable ads we'll talk about that a bit later and here is the ab loock plus which is built in to the CC Cleaner browser CC Cleaner

2:05 is a a computer maintenance software they also broadened out they're offering and you've got three settings and the first one essential roughly corresponds to the default setting um of O of of the plug-in okay so what's an acceptable ad there are ads which aren't intrusive are annoying and they're clearly labeled as advertisements there's certain legal requirements which require that as well

2:37 in various territories and ads that abide by the those standards are placed on a white list it's worth noting that large Publishers have to pay as well to be um on that white list so in terms of the trends from the UK we've got some data here on ad block plus the browser extension and the Gen around the general topic which both seem to correlate in terms of relative search

3:08 interest since 2004 so according to this data around um 2011 there's been a rise in the relative search interest for the browser extension and around the topic and then a decline started around uh 2013 approximately in the relative search interest so that's just some guidance on

3:39 how to interpret the Google Trends data so in terms of the stats we've got in terms of the usage the Chrome sore reports 10 million plus users of Adblock Plus and Firefox um extension store around 6 million users and back to the um IAB February 2020 dat this suggests that ad blocking levels

4:10 have remained relatively consistent since 2016 and again more information about the actual demographics men are two more times more likely to use an ad blocker than women and this is possibly due to that we know that men are more likely to take up new technology than women here's some data from a while back in terms of the motivations bad blockers in the UK and by far on way the most

4:42 popular reason to block to use ad blockers is to block all types of ads which stands to reason really and in terms of Trends beyond the UK is some research from uh northern Europe and the United States finds that fewer respondents said they use ad blocks in 2020 than four years ago so it's potentially a uh a broader Trend than just in the

5:13 UK so why is has there been a decline in or stabiliz and or stabilization in the use of ad blockers possibly it's down to the shift to browsing on mobile devices in various markets and also due to the rise of ad blocking and the reasons for that Publishers and tech companies are asserting more discipline around the display of annoying ads like popups and Auto playay videos with sound

5:45 on so they're listening to their audience and their concerns so there's some research from the Press Gazette which is a publishing trade newspaper they tested the ab abblock Plus Chrome extension on every major online news website serving the UK and found that less than half take action against ad blockers some major ad Reliant news websites such as the Daily Mail the sun

6:16 and the mirror were taking no action at that time to prevent ad blocking it's worth noting the Daily Mail has since blocked ad block users okay so in terms of how ERS are reacting to um ad block users some uh add an overlay which basically stops your access if they detect an ad blocker in your browser and others use a different type of

6:47 overlay which is to encourage people to disable their ad blocker so here this is from the CNBC website you've got the option to to continue without supporting so it means that you are not blocked from browsing the website just because you're using an ad blocker so personally speaking one of the things I think is possibly a factor um in terms of ad blocking is the remarketing ads following us around the internet I personally don't like that

7:19 and I suspect that may be a factor in um ad block uh take up okay so beyond the traditional Tech ads on search engines and banner ads on publishing websites there's other types of advertising such as native advertising like toet an out brain and it's worth noting that some ad blockers do block that type of AD as well I tested it on the IMDb which is a database about

7:51 films and even on the the default setting the tabula ads were blocked and also since the conference is about Amazon ads I tested Amazon sponsored listings using U block origin ad blocker and it blocked the sponsored listings but not in my Those ads weren't blocked in my test using ad block plus or just the the normal ad block browser okay so as we've said um

8:26 there is a move to use of browsers on smartphones the mobile internet Chrome for Android has no extension support so you can't block ads uh just with a browser extension there are various options for for Chrome such as ad shield and one of the Technologies they're using is dns-based interception of ads and um there's for other browsers like Samsung

8:58 internet there's ad C so yeah I haven't gone into the history but ad blocking has an around 20 year history on the internet and the technology is evolving so in the past how it would work is there' literally be lists made of um content to block which would be how the ad blocker would work but now ad block

9:30 plus has perceptual ad blocking which where ADS are visually detected and this is a more scalable method than applying tens of thousands of manually created filter rules so in terms of the the ad blocker Market there's some academic research which suggests that ublock is considered the plugin with the best performance in terms of AD and thirdparty tracker filtering and the least privacy tracking

10:02 and there's there's ways you can block ads on Modern Android smartphones by changing the by changing to an ad blocking Services private DNS provider and in terms of the bigger picture it's worthwhile noting that there is a conflation of online privacy and ad blocking goes through the online Pro privacy stroke ad blocker tool calls

10:34 itself online privacy Made Easy that's its catchphrase [Music] and there's also artificial intelligence technology which has been um developed in research recently which can achieve a rate of 93% accuracy in deec detecting sites that successfully circumvent ad blockers because there is the ad blocker there's the ad block blocker and there's also

11:06 the ad blocker blocker and it is a sort of a war of technology which is continuously evolving and um suffice to say it's um Ever Changing okay so as I say um ad blocking and privacy are very closely related not necessarily the exact same thing but certain brands are

11:38 one of they they're marketing their unique selling points as privacy and apple is doing that and you can't ignore what Apple are doing so for example in the upcoming iOS 14 software there's a feature which lets users opt out of AD tracking on a per app basis and that has everyone from Facebook to news publish is concerned about advertising Revenue so that's Again part of the bigger picture and again there's adds in other forms which hither to haven't you

12:10 haven't been able to block but there's Technologies developing and evolving such as adskip Pro which allows you to block audio ads in podcasts it's functionality is limited you've got some uh guidance there to the best of my knowledge only works on certain podcasts at the moment so um yeah it's still evolving it's worth noting there's some gaps in how these Technologies

12:41 work so so for example this is um a search on Google for the brand Adidas um with Adblock Plus uh built into CC Cleaner browser and um with the ad blocker off you can still see the Adidas ad at the bottom and the sponsored uh Google shopping listings which it also adds and with it on you

13:13 still see the sponsored Google shopping listing so it's not blocking um sponsored listings and if memory serves I contacted um IO who make AB Block Plus about this about five years ago and they said it' be bad for the US user experience if they blocked all of the the shopping listings in the shopping section that was when shopping listings were only ads so I don't know what's going on there to be honest okay quick few

13:46 takeaways so obviously there's implications for um how sales and um relation to SEO and PPC and in terms of how you target your audiences there's Less ad blocking on smartphones according to the research in the UK because it's more difficult basically to do that and again the strategy needs to take into account that

14:17 some of the recent new and next Generations of Internet users may be invisible to certain advertisers in certain markets so you do need an SEO content Strate to engage the ad blocking demographics we talked about the young earlier apparently High earners are more likely to use ad blockers as well it's possible to track site users ad block usage with Google analytics avanes cou it's given some guidance on that you need to test your sites using

14:48 the popular ad blockers on various devices and operating systems because how you structured your site may cause um some content to be blocked which is not even ads and there's the bigger picture of how will online newspaper and magazine Publishers pay for content if K the customers won't see or click on ads there's there's consequences to not funding journalism essentially so think

15:21 about that in terms of your own uh use it's worth noting that um there's still privacy concerns and tracking concerns with the default settings of uh adlock plus so that may become more of an issue as time goes on as we move from the general spe from specific concerns of ad blocking to PR privacy on the

15:54 web okay I think I'm running out of time so for my slide please visit my website and I'm going to be linking to some of the studies I talked about as well as a recent first large scale study of the state of the ad block cir convention arms race you can follow me on Twitter at SEO tips and tricks and my website is ww. SEO london.

16:24 co.uk whoops looks like the ad blocker was kicked in I've got a lot to get through so I'll just have to get stuck in okay so what is ad blocking Wikipedia defines ad blocking as a type of software or less commonly a computer hardware device that can remove or alter advertising content from a web page website or mobile app okay the stats where are we today in the United Kingdom so the most recent stats

16:56 I could find are from February 2020 which suggests according to a poll conducted by ugab on behalf of the Internet advertising Bureau UK is that around 25% of all people in in the United Kingdom surveyed have ever downloaded an ad blocker and are currently using one and the reported ad blocking levels from that survey have been relatively stable for the past four years so the breakdown regarding devices

17:29 21% of online adults in the United Kingdom use ad blockers on desktops or laptops but it's worth noting that according to audience measurement less than 20% of the time spent online in that territory is via those devices compared to 10% on smartphone and in terms of demographics the 18 to 24s Remain the most likely ad group to have installed an ad blocker

18:00 however this decreased significantly over the previous year to 2020 so in practice this is the the the default settings of the adlock plus uh browser plugin which is a very popular um ad blocker and the default setting is that you allow acceptable ads we'll talk about that a bit later and here is the ab loock Plus which is built in to the CC Cleaner browser CC Cleaner

18:35 is a a computer maintenance software they also broadened out they're offering and you've got three settings and the first one essential roughly corresponds to the default setting um of O of of the plug-in okay so what's an acceptable ad there are ads which aren't intrusive are annoying and they're clearly labeled as advertisements there's certain legal requirements which require that as well

19:06 in various territories and ads that abide by the those standards are placed on a white list it's worth noting that large Publishers have to pay as well to be um on that white list so in terms of the trends from the UK we've got some data here on ad block plus the browser extension and the g around the general topic which both seem to correlate in terms of relative search

19:38 interest since 2004 so according to this data around um 2011 there's been a rise in the relative search interest for the browser extension and around the topic and then a decline started around uh 2013 approximately in the relative search interest so that's just some guidance on

20:08 how to interpret the Google Trends data so in terms of the stats we've got in terms of the usage the Chrome Store reports 10 million plus users of Adblock Plus and Firefox um extension store around 6 million users is and back to the um IAB February 20120 data this suggests that ad blocking

20:38 levels have remained relatively consistent since 2016 and again more information about the actual demographics men are two more times more likely to use an ad blocker than women and this is possibly due to that we know that men are more likely to take up new technology than women here's some data from a while back in terms of the motivations bad blockers in the UK and by far on way the most

21:11 popular reason to block to use ad blockers is to block all types of ads which stands to reason really and in terms of Trends beyond the UK is some research from uh northern Europe and the United States finds that fewer respondents said they use ad blockers in 2020 than four years ago so it's potentially a uh a broader Trend than just in the

21:42 UK so why is has there been a decline in or stabiliz and or stabilization in the use of ad blockers possibly it's down to the shift to browsing on mobile devices in various markets and also due to the rise of ad blocking and the reasons for that Publishers and tech companies are asserting more discipline around the display of annoying ads like popups and Auto playay videos with sound

22:14 on so they're listening to their audience and their concerns so there's some research from the Press Gazette which is a publishing trade newspaper they tested the abro ad block Plus Chrome extension on every major online news website serving the UK and found that less than half take action against ad blockers some major ad Reliant news websites such as the Daily Mail the sun

22:45 and the mirror were taking no action at that time to prevent ad blocking it's worth noting the Daily Mail has since blocked ad block users okay so in terms of of how Publishers are reacting to um ad block users some uh add an overlay which basically stops your access if they detect an ad blocker in your browser and others use a different type of

23:17 overlay which is to encourage people to disable their ad blocker so here this from the CNBC website you've got the option to to continue without supporting so it means that you are not blocked from browsing the website just because you're using an ad blocker so personally speaking one of the things I think is possibly a factor um in terms of ad blocking is the remarketing ads following us around the internet I personally don't like that

23:48 and I suspect that may be a factor in um ad block uh take up okay so beyond the traditional text ads on search engines and banner ads on publishing websites there's other types of advertising such as native advertising like toua and outbrain and it's worth noting that some ad blockers do block that type of AD as well I tested it on the IMDb which is a database about

24:20 films and even on the the default setting the tabula ads were blocked and also since the conference is about Amazon ads I tested Amazon sponsored listings using U block origin ad blocker and it blocked the sponsored listings but not in my Those ads weren't blocked in my test using ad block plus or just the the normal ad block browser okay so as we've said um

24:55 there is a move to use of browsers on smartphones the mobile internet Chrome for Android has no extension support so you can't block ads uh just with a browser extension there are various options for for Chrome such as ad shield and one of the Technologies they're using is DNS based interception of ads and um there's

25:25 for other browsers like Samsung internet there's ad guard so yeah I haven't gone into the history but ad blocking has an around 20 year history on the internet and the technology is evolving so in the past how it would work is there' literally be lists made of um content to block which would be how the

25:57 ad block would work but now ad block plus has perceptual ad blocking which where ADS are visually detected and this is a more scalable method than applying tens of thousands of manually created filter rules so in terms of the the ad blocker Market there's some academic research which suggests that ublock is considered the plugin with the best performance in terms of AD and thirdparty tracker filtering and the least privacy

26:31 tracking and there's there's ways you can block ads on Modern Android smartphones by changing the ad by changing to an ad blocking Services private DNS provider and in terms of the bigger picture it's worthwhile noting that there is a conflation of online privacy and ad blocking ghostery the online Pro privacy stroke ad blocker tool calls

27:03 itself online privacy Made Easy that's its catchphrase [Music] and there's also artificial intelligence technology which has been um developed in research recently which can achieve a rate of 93% accuracy in deec detecting sites that successfully circumvent ad blockers because there is the ad blocker there's the ad block blocker and there's also

27:35 the ad blocker blocker and it is sort of a war of technology which is continuously evolving and um suffice to say it's um Ever Changing okay so as I say um ad blocking and pre pracy are very closely related not necessarily the exact same thing but certain brands are

28:07 one of they they're marketing their unique selling points as privacy and apple is doing that and you can't ignore what Apple are doing so for example in the upcoming iOS 14 software there's a feature which lets users opt out of AD tracking on a per app basis and that has everyone from Facebook Book News Publishers concerned about advertising Revenue so that's Again part of the bigger picture and again there's adds in other forms which hither to haven't you

28:40 haven't been able to block but there's Technologies developing and evolving such as adskip Pro which allows you to block audio ads in podcasts its functionality is limited you've got some uh guidance there the to the best of my knowledge I only worked on certain podcasts at the moment so um yeah it's still evolving it's worth noting there's some gaps in how these Technologies

29:10 work so say for example this is um a search on Google for the brand Adidas um with ad block plus uh built into CC Cleaner browser and um with the ad blocker off you can still see the Adidas ad at the bottom and the sponsored uh Google shopping listings which are also ads and with it

29:41 on you still see the sponsored Google shopping listing so it's not blocking um sponsored listings and if memory serves I contacted um IO who make AB Block Plus about this about five years ago and they said it be bad for the user experience if they blocked all of the the shopping listings in the shopping section that was when shopping listings were only ads so I don't know what's going on there to be honest okay

30:13 quick few takeaways so obviously there's implications for um how sales and um relation to SEO and PPC and in terms of how you target your audiences there's Less ad blocking on smartphones according to the research in the UK because it's more difficult basically to do that and again the

30:44 strategy needs to take into account that some of the recent new and next Generations of Internet users may be invisible to certain advertisers in certain markets so you do need an SEO content strategy to engage the ad blocking demographics we talked about the young earlier apparently High earners are more likely to use ad blockers as well it's possible to track site users ad block usage with Google analytics avanes cou it's given some guidance on

31:14 that you need to test your sites using the popular ad blockers on various devices and operating systems because how you structured your site may cause um some content to be blocked which is not even ads and there's the bigger picture of how will online newspaper and magazine Publishers pay for content if K the customers won't see or click on ads

31:45 there's there's consequences to not funding journalism essentially so think about that in terms of your own uh use it's worth noting that um there's still privacy concerns and tracking concerns with the default settings of uh adlock plus so that may become more of an issue as time goes on as we move from

32:16 the general spec from specific concerns of ad blocking to PR privacy on the web okay I think I'm running out of time so for my slides please visit my website and I'm going to be linking to some of the studies I talked about as well as a recent first large scale study of the state of the ad block circumvention arms race you can follow me on Twitter at SEO tips and

32:47 tricks and my website is ww. SEO london. co.uk whoops looks like the ad blocker was kicked in