The internet is widely used in the United States. Infact, its regularly used by 84.2% of the US population. These 268 million people visiting the internet create a huge 63.2 billion dollar annual enterprise (that is, 63,200,000,000 dollars to add emphasis to the 0's) , and its through this money that companies such as Google thrive and grow. Where is all of this abundance of money coming from, one might ask? Well, those annoying ads before and while a YouTube video plays, the ads at the top of Google search results, the flashing animations on web pages; all of these add up to a huge $63.2 billion annual lump sum of cash for business. On average, each person in the world (minus Chinese users) earn Google $6.30 annually, not much money on its own, but given the worlds population, money will add up quickly. For Google, its their source of income, and it allows a person to use Google Drive, Docs, YouTube, Maps, Earth, Search, Blogger, and more, all for free! All a person has to do is see a few ads daily, and they can have their "free" stuff. Its a pretty sweet deal, but what if a person could have their cake and eat it too? Welcome, to the world of adblockers.
Adblockers have been around since 2006, and do just as the name implies, blocking ads. Its quite simple to use for the mainstream, as it can be installed on Firefox or Google Chrome browsers with the click of the install button, and once installed, they block almost all ads from appearing, on almost all websites. Not only does enabling adblockers remove annoyances before videos, but they also help protect the user from clicking on an ad that take the user to an unsafe or unintended website. Seen from this perspective, adblock is a wonder, making websites load slightly faster, keeping people safer from unintented content, and relieving annoyances. No more, will ignorant Grandma click on an ad stating that this one weird tip will help her lose weight! In total, adblock has a large userbase, with usage growing 70% between 2013 to 2014, from 85 million users to 144 million users, with the exponential growth showing no near end in sight.
But nothing in life is free, and the cost lands on the corporate end. In 2014, Google reportedly lost 6.6 billion dollars to users using adblock. That totals more than 10% of Googles revenue. Adblock users are the largest bleeding wound for Google, but that might change soon. Google is reportedly deciding to fight back in 2015, planning on reworking how they integrate ads so as to bypass the adblocker, so that their ads can no longer be blocked. Rumor also has it that Google has been paying off adblock programs, such as the popular Adblock Plus, millions of dollars to secretly leak small ads here and their to their users. This benefits both the adblock software company and Google gets some of their lost revenue back, but has created worry of corruption in the adblock community, not sure which adblocking software companies have been bribed to betray their users.
The lesson to be learned is that adblocking is clearly having a huge 6.6 billion dollar effect on advertising revenues, and companies are clearly making statements that this blocking must come to an end. However, users are also clearly making the statement that ads are obtrusive and annoying. The only real compromise that could be reached between the two parties is a reduction in obtrusive ads, leaving only relevant, nonintrusive ads. No one knows how this battle will resolve itself in the coming years, but clearly companies such as Google are quite concerned, and the internet cannot be free without a cost.
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