Signaling a serious and growing threat to the digital advertising industry, a new Accenture survey revealed that most consumers – 61 percent – are aware of several options for removing advertising such as ad blockers. The survey of 28,000 consumers across 28 countries also finds that more than four in 10 (42 percent) said they would pay to eliminate ad interruptions. Ad blockers are technological methods for automatically removing or altering advertising content such as videos, images, and text on a Web page. The blockers enable TV, smartphone, tablet and PC users to load video files more quickly, view more clean-looking Web pages, reduce bandwidth consumption, and increase their privacy by removing tracking and profiling systems of video advertising delivery platforms. "Ad blockers are a relatively new threat to the digital advertising industry," said Gavin Mann, Accenture's Global Broadcast Industry lead. "Consumers are increasingly willing to pay for blockers because too many ads are poorly targeted. In today's world of personalized content, being forced to watch an ad that has no relevance is a missed opportunity and feels increasingly intrusive on precious screen-time. In fact, simple avoidance of content associated with heavy and repetitive irrelevant advertising will increase as consumer choice and awareness of choice increases." The survey found that young consumers are especially aware of ad blockers compared with older age groups. More than two-thirds (69 percent) of those aged 18-to-24, and almost the same number (66 percent) of those between 25 and 34, say they know about ad-interruption technologies. Awareness of ad-blocking methods is more prevalent among consumers in emerging than in developed markets. For instance, two-thirds (65 percent) of respondents in emerging-market countries said they know about ad-blockers compared with 58 percent in mature-market countries. Awareness of these technologies is especially high in Mexico, at 82 percent, whereas only 55 percent of consumers in the UK know about ad blockers. — SG
