ad blockers, those browser extensions that allow you to block banners from a website, have experienced a huge boom in recent years, partly due to the excess of intrusive advertising formats used by many platforms. Now, with a greater awareness of the importance of usability, they seem less necessary… but they are still used massively in the digital ecosystem.
Spain exceeds the average use of adblockers in the world
How every year, the companies of hoot-suite Y We Are Social have released their Digital Global Overview, a report with which they recount the different aspects of the current digital world. The use of adblockers is one of its study topics, and in this 2022 edition we see how Spain has risen in the list, ranking as the fourteenth country with the highest percentage of use of these ad blocking tools in the world.
In any case, this report leaves a curious conclusion: despite rising five positions in the ranking, in reality the percentage of users between 16 and 64 years old who use these tools has decreased, going from 41% to 38%. With which we can identify that during the last year, there has been a decrease in the use of these tools among users between 16 and 64 years of age. This may be due to web platforms beginning to take better measures against intrusive advertising strategies.
Also, remember that Google itself undertook a few years ago, whose recommendations were reflected in the implementation of its own adblocker for Chrome. Google understands that intrusive banners lead to poor user experiences and this can lead to a website ranking drop. Perhaps for this reason, websites are stopping using this type of advertising and the use of adblockers is less necessary.
Another possibility is that the widespread implementation of adblocker detectors, which prevent the display of content As long as the user does not deactivate the adblocker, it has led to the abandonment of this type of tool by users. It must be taken into account that the income generated by this advertising system allows many of the websites to stay afloat.
An example could be , something that to date many websites have already copied. With this, the American newspaper took a position against the use of these extensions.
The young adult generation leads the way in the use of adblockers
According to the report presented, the majority of Internet users who make use of this type of tool are men. In the graph that we see below, we see how the study has divided the audience into 5 different groups based on their age ranges: 16 to 24 years old, 25 to 34 years old, 35 to 44 years old, 45 to 54 years old and 55 to 64 years.
Among all the groups, the one with the highest percentage peak in the use of adblockers is the second, which comprises the population of young adults. In this group, men have an estimated 43.2%, when the rest of the groups do not exceed 40%. Meanwhile, women here reached a peak of 38.5%, which still represents a contrast with the rest of the groups that do not exceed 35%.
This graph also confirms that from the age of 34 onwards, the use of these tools shows a tendency to decrease, both in men and women. Thus finally reaching the last group, with the lowest percentage values.
Why do we use adblockers?
If we have already discussed who and how much use these ad blocking tools, the next step is to understand why they have a need to use them in the first place. In response to this, the report presents the previous graph covering the reasons most stated by users. dominating the list with 62.1% there are those who affirm that there are too many ads in their navigationthis represents exponential growth compared to the 22.3% that stated the same in the 2021 report.
Secondly, we found that the ads are “in the way”, which we can assume refers to ads that force an interaction with the user to be removed or to continue browsing. Or we could even understand that it is about intrusive ads that make browsing worse. In one way or another, 55.3% agree with this statement.
Then we find a more or less stable percentage among those who use them to protect your privacy, because the ads are not important to them and those looking to stop viewing inappropriate content; these represent 41.2%, 40.8% and 40.8% respectively.
what happened last year
Spain below the average in the use of adblockers in the world
As we said, in 2021 we could see that Spain was in nineteenth place: with 41% of those between 16 and 64 years old using an adblocker, slightly below the global average of 42.7%.
A younger and more masculine audience for this tool
Following the report presented, we have a graph that offers a percentage comparison between the number of men and women who use these extensions. It is divided into 5 age ranges, from 16 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, 45 to 54 and finally 55 to 64 years. The largest percentage this past year belonged to young men, between 16 and 24 years old.
It is also visible that as the age range increases, the use of ad blockers decreases. This may be due in large part to the lack of information present in older people regarding updates from the digital world.
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