PageFair 2015 Report: The Cost of Ad Blocking
We are pleased to publish our 2015 global report on ad blocking, once again in partnership with Adobe. In this report we drill into geographic detail, providing per-country and per-state information on ad block usage rates, monthly active user counts, as well as estimates of the total cost to publishers in many regions. We find that not only has ad blocking continued its fast growth on desktop, but it has also leaped onto mobile in Asia, and will soon go mobile in the West with the upcoming launch of content blocking on iOS.
Quick Facts:
- Ad blocking estimated to cost publishers nearly $22 billion during 2015.
- There are now 198 million active adblock users around the world.
- Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months.
- US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
- UK ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
Since our last report, the existential threat of ad blocking has become a pressing issue in the boardrooms of publishers across the world. A concerted response is required, founded upon a renewed focus on user experience, and enabled by secure ad serving technology like PageFair’s. We hope this report will continue to help publishers, advertisers, consumer groups and technology vendors come together to define principles that support a sustainably free and open Web.
Note: the PDF and slideshare versions of the report were updated on 26 August 2015 with minor corrections. The figure in the chart on page 6 has been updated, replacing the Q2 2015 median with the June 2015 median for Germany. This brings it into consistency with the data in the tables on page 17.