Article 9 The Drivers and Consequences of Ad Blocking

Question 1

What is being studied?

Answer 1

The impact of forcing ads on ad block users on website evaluation and ad effectiveness, and whether alternative strategies exist.

Question 2

Why is this important to study?

Answer 2

Because only a few studies have investigated this phenomenon.
Because there are benefits to understanding ad block users.

Question 3

How and where is this research conducted?

Answer 3

An experiment ran with 599 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk, who were asked to evaluate six news sites. Half the participants were exposed to banner ads, while the other half was not.

A survey conducted afterwards measured the users’ evaluation of the news site. Mouse tracking (subsite for eye-tracking) was used.

Question 4

What are the main findings?

Answer 4

• Ad block users ignore ads when forced on them.
• Ad block users are more likely to pay for ad free content.
• Ad blockers are not as harmful as believed to be.
• Ad blockers help filter out users who are less responsive to ads.

Question 5

What are the limitations?

Answer 5

• Although mouse tracking is a good proxy for eye-tracking, it is less precise.
• Although the news sites were represented as realistic as possible, participants looked at the site differently than what they normally do.