Millennials are most likely to utilize ad blocking on desktop. Source: Sourcepoint and comScore study.
People who use ad blockers are more likely to be the types of high-value consumers marketers aim to reach: young and well off. That’s according to a new study from Sourcepoint and comScore.
The State of Ad Blocking report looked at desktop usage of ad blockers globally as well as early insights on rates of usage on mobile devices.
Ad blocking skews younger, with 18-24 year-olds using ad blockers most often in all regions the study looked at.
While Millennials are still the biggest users, the demographic trend differed slightly in the US, where usage of ad blockers on desktops is higher among users ages 45-54 and 55-64 than among those ages 35-44. However, in general, the study found, “the incidence of ad blocking has an inverse relationship with age”.
In nearly all markets, the highest earners were also the most likely to use desktop ad blockers. The exception was France, which had high usage across all income segments.
Ad blocking usage on desktop is higher among top income earners. Source: Sourcepoint and comScore study.
Across the Top 100 media properties, in the US, 87 percent had ad blocking usage below 20 percent. The rates were similar in the UK, however in Germany and France ad blocking is much more prevalent: 60 percent and 21 percent of properties have ad blocking usage above 20 percent, respectively.
Mobile Ad Blocking Expected To Rise — Already High In Asia
The July data used in the study shows that in the US, UK and The Netherlands, 0.1 percent of mobile pageviews are affected by ad blockers. That compares to the significantly higher rates of 7.9 percent and 9.0 percent, respectively, in China and India, where browsers such as UCBrowser and Maxthon that support mobile ad blocking have received substantial adoption.
The study anticipates the launch of content blockers in iOS 9 will increase rates of mobile ad blocking in Europe and North America. A content blocking app has held the top spot among paid apps in the App Store since shortly after iOS 9’s release last week — the spot is currently held by Crystal, which supplanted Peace after its maker pulled it.
The increasing use of ad blockers is concerning to both publishers, who stand to lose more revenues, and advertisers, who could lose access to coveted audiences of high earners and Millennials. Greg Sterling has a look at possible legal action the industry might take in the US as well as other tactics publishers are taking to combat ad blockers.
Sourcepoint offers publisher solutions to address ad blocking, including allowing publishers to show messages to web visitors that have ad blockers installed. Ahead of iOS 9’s release, Sourcepoint co-founder Matt Adkisson told Marketing Land that consumers often don’t even realize they have ad blockers enabled — on desktop anyway.
“For that reason, long term, options that involve ad recovery and the user choosing what types of ads to consume (rather than disabling their adblock client) will likely be the most successful” approaches, Adkisson suggests.
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