Ad blockers used by more than half of Americans surveyed

Surveyconducted among 2,000 Americans, showedthat 52% of users use ad blockers in their browser. The most popular reason for installing an ad blocker was concern for one's privacy (20%), with reluctance to watch advertising in second place (18%). 9% cited the ability to load pages faster as a reason. The survey was conducted among US residents by Censuswide, a company specializing in independent marketing research, commissioned by the developers of the Ghostery blocker. In a similar study, carried out in 2022, the number of blocker users was estimated at 34%.

Ad blockers are most popular among people whose professional activities are related to information security (76%), programming (72%) and advertising (66%). It is noteworthy that the overall percentage of those using a blocker due to an unwillingness to watch advertising for these categories remained at approximately 20%, while the number citing privacy protection as a reason increased to approximately 30%. There is also a noticeable increase in the number of programmers and security specialists who want to use an ad blocker to speed up page loading.

49% of respondents believe that large companies impose advertising and user tracking tools, for example, Google does this through promoting the third version of the Chrome manifesto and fight with YouTube ad blockers. 38% believe they should be able to choose when to watch ads and when not to watch them. 33% believe that the right to use ad blockers should be protected at the legislative level. 26% take the position that by default the Internet should be ad-free.

When asked what sensitive data they were concerned about being leaked, 38% noted browsing and search data, 37% location information, 33% purchase data, 33% health-related information, 26% personal data. political views and 22% – information about viewing adult content.

When asked which companies abused the collection of personal data and tracking visitors, 59% noted TikTok, 56% Meta, 49% Twitter, 48% OpenAI, 44% Google, 41% Apple, 40% Amazon and 38% – Microsoft.

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