I teach CS at a state university, specifically computer security. At the beginning of this semester, I did a poll of my students and asked if they use any form of ad-blocking. Less than a third of my students did, and not many more even knew about browsers other than Chrome or Safari. This was out of a class of ~110.

Granted, it's anecdotal, but if 66% of my upper-division CS students don't even know about Firefox and ad-blocking, than I seriously doubt many non-tech people do.

Similarly, after that lecture, I had a student come to my office hours and ask for more info about ad-blockers. I had them open up msn.com and showed them the large banner ad on the page. It took a few seconds for them to even realize they were being advertised to! I then showed them my browser, nice and ad-free.

I get the impression that people have gotten so used to ads flashing in their face that they gloss over them. But the damage is still done.

Although I didn't collect numbers, but I made a similar experience in my workplace. I assume many people are highly distracted by ads and work efficiency is even reduced. Even many software engineers seem to not be aware of ublock... Would be interesting to know how many students started using an ad blocker at the end of your lecture :)

That's not anecdotal; that's a small study.

I did a poll in my CS class last year and half the students knew of it. This is a trade school level CS class so the number struck me as impressive. In another light, it is pretty low.

It's called banner blindness. The brain ends up trained to do the adblocking itself.

No, the brain doesn’t Adblock, that’s the misconception. It gets used to ads to a point where it is not registered _consciously_ anymore. But the ad works subconsciously very well, armies of marketing people studied this.

Brainblock should be the name.

Mindshield

I recently figured I'd try browsing without a dedicated adblocker. Using NextDNS, configured with several adblockers, I thought it would be interesting to see how effective it would be alone.

In approximately no time at all, I wanted to go full Amish. Maybe Office Space.

Ublock should be protected as a religion. It is divinely inspired and a modern miracle. I know about false idols and the antichrist and all that, but I think even Jesus would approve. Gorhill is a Saint.

Hail Saint gorhill!

I have been using Firefox + ad blockers almost exclusively for almost 20 years now on all my devices. I also install Firefox + uBlock Origin for all my family members. I'm constantly suprised when I look at other people's browsers. How can they put up with all those ads, especially on YouTube? (I have uBlock disabled for a certain national newspaper and I'm pretty close to paying for a subscription instead :)

Does Firefox + ublock origin work on iOS? Don't you have to go through the app store to download the adblockers separately?

There is no extensions on FF for iOS, no adblocking. It's just Safari skin.

Probably 99.9% of daily users because they know no different.

I was curious and obviously there is no single exact source but it seems like ~30% of web users have an ad blocker of some kind. Remember that some quite popular browsers include a built-in ad blocker.