The Adblock Plus Install Base

Adblock Plus is a browser add-on. It allows users to block display ads. It comes with a pre-loaded block list, and, it allows users to create white-lists and black-lists. It promises ‘annoyance-free web surfing’.

Here are the usage statistics from the Mozilla install base:

(Roughly 15,000,000 daily users, note the tell-tale elephant function, it’s mass. Also note instrumentation tracking loss on at least two days.) As you can see below, they’re not all from the anglosphere. There’s very high representation from German, French, Russian, and Polish Mozilla language settings.

The vast majority of the install base uses Microsoft Windows systems.

Why do people use Adblock Plus? They did a survey in late 2011 to find out.

~75% said distracting images and sound was an important reason. ~62% cited bandwidth and speed was another one. ~54% cited privacy concerns.

The Mozilla install base is fairly small (4 million) compared to the anglosphere (~400 million). The 365-day trend is stable.

There’s no point in arguing about ethics. Markets aren’t ethical. A small, stable, segment of the population is annoyed/concerned enough with display advertising that they’ll install a technical plugin to avoid it.

***

I’m Christopher Berry.
I write at christopherberry.ca