Ad blocking software continues to be debated amongst developers, publishers and users. Usage continues to explode with growth of 41% in 2015 to 198 million users and mobile just starting to impact the number of ads blocked. A majority of the ad blocking is done on Chrome through an extension but most recently the Opera browser released a native ad blocking feature. This means that ad blocking naturally happens on any website with the flip of a switch. Take a look at the demo here:
Per Adobe, we are only in our infancy with ad blocking. Some of the stats are appalling:
Is this a big deal for publishers and advertisers? Yes. Will we see Chrome release a native ad blocker? No. What's the easiest way out of this for publishers? Push apps serving content outside the browser. This can be an issue as many apps use the internal browsers. What's the easiest way out of this for advertisers? Create compelling, contextual ads and seek to minimize traditional display and text ads on sites.