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An Ad-less Future?/shutterstock
Advertising Age’s Tim Peterson and Courtney Fishman‘s recent article, “Ad Blocking is a Growing Problem. What’s the Fix?” addresses the thorny conflict between the needs of advertisers and the convenience of internet users. Basically, digital marketers need the ever-so-slim revenues that come from online advertising, while users don’t want to be bothered by advertising that may eat up bandwidth, auto-play videos, contain malware and cookies, and generally damage their browsing experience.
This conflict is being continually escalated by browser software that can completely block online ads. The most popular, AdBlock, has been downloaded 400 million times in the United States, and has 50 to 60 million active users, according to Peterson and Fishman. A study from Adobe and PageFair states that 28% of U.S. internet browsers use ad-stopping software, with the numbers expected to increase…
