[keiferski]

This link claims that 39% of people over the age of 56 use an ad blocker. Sorry, but color me skeptical. I could but wrong, but I am highly skeptical of that statistic.

This report also doesn't seem to clarify what is meant by "ad blocker," specifically, which makes the whole thing pretty suspect. Looking into the sources they provide, at least one of them doesn't mention ad blockers at all, even though the related image is about people blocking ads. So, yeah, I'm not considering this to be reliable information.

[somenameforme]

Have you noticed the growing number of sites trying to be increasingly aggressive towards ad-blockers? They're not jumping through these increasingly sophisticated (and expensive!) technical hoops to try to squeeze a few more ad views out of a "tiny, tiny percentage".

The Reg gives 52% of all Americans [1], b2.ai (who sells anti ad block services) gives 45% in North America [2], and so on. Most sources seem to fall in a 30%-50% range, with all sources agreeing that uptake on adblockers has rapidly and dramatically increased. People hate ads.

[1] - https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/america_ad_blocker/

[2] - https://www.b2.ai/ad-blocker-statistics-2024/

[keiferski]

1. The study is claiming 50% of all Americans based on a sample size of 2,000.

According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by research firm Censuswide, on behalf of Ghostery, a maker of software to block ads and online tracking, 52 percent of Americans now use an ad blocker, up from 34 percent according to 2022 Statista data.

2. Both of them, and indeed all of these studies seem to be funded by ad blocking companies. That alone makes them suspect.

I can buy the idea that the advertising industry is under pressure from built-in restrictions pushed by Apple, et al. But the idea that 52% of the American population even knows what an ad blocker is, much less has one installed, is completely absurd.

From a quick search, that percentage is comparable to the number of people that: own an iPhone, drink coffee everyday, or own a pet.

[somenameforme]

2000 is a massive sample assuming it's reasonably representative - far larger than you'd see in an average e.g. election poll. Statistics can be counter-intuitive. The surveys are also generally carried out by survey companies, not the first parties.

You can corroborate these data pretty much anywhere and everywhere. For a silly one I dug up here's [1] PewdiePie in 2016 talking about already seeing a 40% adblock rate as reflected by a non-scientific poll but also in his revenue stats, up from 10%-15% in past years. And it's certainly way higher now - obviously though that sample is going to trend young and probably technically above average.

But really, the thing about ad-blocking is that it's the ultimate in viral tech. Anytime I meet somebody who's not using ad-block I tend to introduce them to the Brave browser and the result like 99.9% of the time is 'omg I didn't even know this was possible.' Those are now people who will probably never go without ad-blocking again and some percent of whom will likely then go on to introduce others to it. There is literally no downside to using an ad-blocker and a million upsides. People just simply don't know about them and/or think they're somehow difficult to use.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20160304044704/https://pewdie.tu...

[keiferski]

I'm really not going to keep arguing about this. I know how statistics work. The studies are clearly biased and make absurd conclusions, and I've listed about ten different problems with them - the foremost being that "ad blocker" is never defined anywhere.

The idea that the number of people using an ad blocker is equivalent to the number of people that drink coffee every morning, subscribe to Netflix, or have a pet makes no sense whatsoever, and if that were the case, you'd see vastly more discussion and general awareness of the concept.

[somenameforme]

There is relatively high general awareness of the concept! Just remember that we all live in bubbles. And the slice of life you see and know is going to have its own little biases that are not nationally reflected. For an easy one in tech, did the majority of people you know (who voted) vote for Trump?