Ad blockers report more installs and uninstalls due to YouTube

Makers of popular adblockers including Ghostery and AdGuard say many more users than usual are installing and uninstalling their adblockers to use YouTube. The video streaming service recently started blocking users worldwide with ad blockers.

Multiple ad blocker makers, including Ghostery, AdGuard, and AdLock, say to Wired Since October, we have seen a spike in the number of users installing and uninstalling their ad blocker. It appears that users install the ad blockers in the hope that they will block YouTube’s advertisements, only to remove them when it turns out that they don’t work.

Ghostery says it sees three to five times as many installations and removals per day than normal, keeping the number of active users stable. More than ninety percent of users who completed a questionnaire upon removal indicated that they removed the ad blocker because it did not work on YouTube.

AdGuard talks about 11,000 to 52,000 removals per day, while the Chrome extension is normally removed 6,000 times per day. Here too, a strong increase can be seen in the number of installations, with a peak of 60,000 new installations. AdLock talks about a 30 percent increase in the number of removals and installations. Eyeo, the company behind AdBlock and AdBlock Plus, did not want to share figures.

Since June, YouTube has been experimenting with an adblock check that blocks users with adblockers. Only when the ad blocker is disabled would the user be able to watch videos again. This experiment has been expanded in recent weeks; This week YouTube confirmed that blocking is now happening worldwide. According to Ghostery, the adblock check works with ‘certain open source filtering rules’ that are used by adblockers to block advertisements that are recognized by YouTube. Adblockers are now trying to bypass the adblock check.