According to a report from WIRED magazine on Friday local time, YouTube recently announced that it will increase its crackdown on ad blockers globally, resulting in hundreds of thousands of people uninstalling ads. Interceptor.
Hundreds of thousands of users uninstalled their ad blockers in October, reaching “record numbers,” according to ad blocking companies. At the same time, the number of newly installed ad blockers has hit an all-time high , as people look for alternatives that won’t trigger YouTube anti-ad blocking pop-ups.
Several ad blocker providers disclosed more detailed data. One of the blockers, Ghostery, said that in a survey on the reasons for uninstallation, more than 90% of users said that the tool failed on YouTube . At the same time, users are keen to find viable solutions, leading many to try to switch to Microsoft’s Edge browser. Ghostery installations on Edge surged 30% last month compared to September. Throughout most of October, the number of uninstalls and installs per day was 3-5 times higher than usual.
AdGuard, another well-known ad blocker, said that the company’s tool has about 75 million users, including 4.5 million paid users, and about 6,000 people usually uninstall its own extensions from the Chrome browser every day . The company’s chief technology officer Andrey Meshkov said that from October 9 to the end of the month, about 11,000 people uninstalled AdGuard every day, and the number of uninstalls in a single day soared to 52,000 times on October 18.
But like Ghostery, AdGuard has seen a surge in installations as users seek alternatives. On October 18th and 27th, the number of installations of AdGuard on Chrome reached approximately 60,000 times. Subscribers also grew when people realized that AdGuard’s paid tools were (for now) immune to YouTube’s crackdown.
Naijatechnews previously reported that YouTube spokesman Christopher Rowton said that the ad blocker violated the platform’s terms of service, and the company provides a YouTube Premium plan of $13.99 per month for users who want an ad-free experience. “Advertising supports a diverse ecosystem of creators around the world, enabling billions of viewers to access the content they love”.
However, users are not helpless in the face of YouTube’s upgraded anti-ad blocking measures. For example, Twitter user @endermanch posted that there is an easy way to bypass YouTube blocking by simply changing the browser identity (UA) to Windows Phone through an officially created extension .
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