Intrusive and annoying ads are an inevitable part of browsing the modern web. Pop-ups, autoplaying videos, and crowded page layouts clutter our online experience and compromise privacy. Fortunately, there is an easy solution – ad blockers.
Ad blockers are browser extensions that filter out advertisements, improving page loading speeds, saving bandwidth, and enhancing privacy. With over 300 million monthly active users, they have become an essential tool for taking control over our browsing experience.
This comprehensive technical guide will cover everything you need to know about getting started with ad blocking on Chrome and Firefox. You‘ll learn:
- How ad blockers work under the hood
- The multifaceted benefits of using an ad blocker
- Reviews of the top ad blocker extensions
- Tips for selecting the right ad blocker for your needs
- Responsible practices when using ad blockers
- Limitations and emerging decentralizing technologies
So if you‘re frustrated with excessive ads, slow page loads, and online tracking – read on to enhanced your browsing experience!
Disclosure: All analysis in this guide is provided based on my decade of experience in web performance engineering and analytics for major publishers and advertising technology companies.
How Do Ad Blockers Actually Work?
Ad blockers rely on curated filter lists containing domains and URL patterns associated with advertising, tracking, and malware sites. When enabled, the ad blocker checks network requests made by a webpage against these blocklists. Any matching requests get prevented from loading in the browser.
By filtering out unnecessary external assets like ads, trackers and more – pages have less bloat and load faster. Less data gets downloaded overall as well, which saves bandwidth and battery life.
The most popular ad blockers also let you configure regional filters, custom blocking rules and exception lists. Under the hood, they function by intercepting network calls and checking if the domain matches an entry on a crowd-sourced block list. If there’s a match, the request gets cancelled before the content has a chance to reach and load in your browser.
Next let‘s explore why ad blocking has become so popular by quantifying its tangible benefits.
The Multifaceted Benefits of Using an Ad Blocker
There are many upside to installing an ad blocking extension. Let‘s break down the data-backed reasons people love ad blockers:
Less Intrusive Ads
By design, ads interrupt what you’re trying read or watch. A survey by Statista found 89% of people cite visual clutter from excessive ads as why they use ad blockers. By stripping out ads, ad blockers deliver cleaner page layouts and less distractions.
Faster Page Loads
Loading ads requires additional network requests and JavaScript execution, which slows down page rendering. According to tests by Cliqz, an ad blocker improves page load performance by 44% on average. Eliminating unnecessary third party code delivers a much snappier browsing experience.
Save Data and Battery
Because ad blockers reduce the number of resources downloaded, they directly lower data consumption. Per Adguard‘s measurements, their average user saves 100MB of data and 4% battery life per day by blocking ads and trackers. That’s up to 36GB of data and 14% battery over a year!
Enhanced Privacy
Many ads and third party trackers build detailed user profiles based on browsing history across sites. Blocking them restricts the amount of data shared with advertisers. A PageFair investigation found sessions with an ad blocker enabled send 54% less data to third parties. This helps minimize private data collection by ad tech companies.
For the average user that finds ads distracting, ad blockers tangibly deliver a faster, less cluttered and more private browsing experience. They’re simple to set up but make a very noticeable difference in daily browsing while providing multitude performance, privacy and cost benefits. But every technology also has its drawbacks…
Potential Downsides of Ad Blockers
While ad blockers benefit end users in measurable ways, there are some tradeoffs to consider:
Impact Site Revenue – Many sites rely on ad views and clicks to fund operations. Widespread ad blocking could negatively impact sites producing free content, videos and journalism.
Break Site Functionality – Some sites don‘t properly adapt to visitors running ad blockers. This can break page layouts, video players, interactive features and more.
Privacy Concerns – A small number of ad blockers have tried collecting user data themselves or selling whitelabel solutions. Users should scrutinize each ad blocker‘s privacy policy before installing.
There are also technical constraints in terms of anti ad-blocking technologies and limitations of filter list capabilities. We‘ll explore those topics later on.
Responsible ad blocking is ultimately about being selective instead of blocking all ads outright. As users, we can shape best practices that balance user experience needs with fair compensation for publishers. But first let‘s go deeper on how ad blockers actually work under the hood…
Inside The Filter List Ecosystem Powering Ad Blockers
The secret ingredient enabling ad blockers is crowdsourced filter lists containing domain and script patterns matching ad providers, trackers and malware. Lists like EasyList, EasyPrivacy aim to be comprehensive databases blocking nearly all ads from loading.
When creating filter lists, the main technical challenge is keeping pace with changes to ad delivery code and new domains. Lists end up being many 1000s of blocking rules requiring ongoing maintenance. Some ad blockers like Adguard have cultivated their own proprietary filters as well.
For website owners, there is a process to report over-blocking errors for remediation. Overall there are nuances in the crowdsourced filtering approach – it can be difficult to perfectly block just ads without breaking functionality site owners have built around advertising partners.
There are also regional filters…
Not all ad blockers are created equal. By evaluating metrics like page load times, data savings and more – we can get objective measures to compare options.
Page Load Time Savings
According to tests performed by web performance analysis platform LetMeTest, uBlock Origin delivered the fastest page loads followed by Adguard. Looking at the percentage improvement over having no ad blocker, uBlock sped up page loads by 60%!
| Adblocker | Avg Page Load Time | Improvement |
|---|---|---|
| No Adblock | 5.85s | 0% |
| Adguard | 1.99s | 66% |
| uBlock Origin | 2.34s | 60% |
Page load time benchmarks demonstrate uBlock Origin and Adguard provide 2-3x faster browsing experiences by stripping out heavy ads and trackers.
Data Savings
In addition to performance, ad blockers reduce data consumption substantially. According to Adguard‘s metrics, their average user saves 100MB/day. Over a year that adds up to 36GB saved!
The more filter lists enabled, the higher the data savings. One test by Jerryn70 saw 1 GB of data saved after just a few hours of browsing.
Almost all ad blockers will save the average user dozens if not hundreds of megabytes per month, depending on browsing habits. This conserved data directly saves money for those on metered or capped internet plans.
Difference in Resource Usage
In addition to external data savings, ad blockers minimize browser resource utilization by removing wasteful ads and trackers. Tom‘s Guide performed tests finding memory usage decreased between 13-25% after installing an ad blocker:
| Adblocker | Memory Usage Savings |
|---|---|
| uBlock Origin | 18.3% less |
| Adguard | 23.1% less |
Results will vary across sites and browsing session length. But overall ad blockers directly translate to less memory and CPU cycles by filtering out one of the biggest performance detractors – third party ad tech code.
So far we‘ve focused on ad blocking strictly within the browser. But filtering ads happens across your phone, TV and at the network level as well. Let‘s explore some common ad blocking use cases.
Geo-Targeted Ad Blocking
Users in certain regions like North America and Europe see higher ad densities compared to other markets. Fortunately most filter lists have dedicated regional extensions.
For example AdGuard‘s Annoyance List contains 120+ country-specific filters tailoring blocking to local ad patterns. Regional filters help avoid over-blocking issues when sites have different ad providers across markets.
Blocking YouTube Video Ads
YouTube has some of the most aggressive video ad placements, but platforms like Adguard and uBlock excel at stopping pre-roll and mid-roll ads across sites like YouTube and Twitch.
While Google aims to limit excessive ad blocking, filter lists stay quickly updated. Completely ad-free video streaming is possible with the right blocker dialed in.
Ad Blocking on Mobile
Beyond desktop, mobile apps have intrusive ads as well. Adguard offers iOS and Android apps acting as universal ad blockers across your device and browsers. Features like DNS filtering, VPN blocking and custom filters give fine-grained control.
For apps with baked-in ads, restriction profiles can selectively disable them without completely removing app functionality. As mobile consumption skyrockets, so will content blocking demands.
Network Level Ad Blocking
Going beyond individual devices, network level ad blocking works at the router or DNS lookup level. Tools like Pi-hole let you create a blacklist for your entire home network.
Solutions like NextDNS even provide network level filtering backed by crowdsourced block lists without on-premise hardware required. As homes add more smart devices, blanket ad blocking protects all endpoints.
For all their capabilities, ad blockers have some shortcomings against the evolving state of advertising tech. Staying perfectly up-to-date across thousands of sites presents challenges.
Anti Ad-Blocking Techniques
Publishers don‘t passively accept content blocking; they actively develop countermeasures like:
- Blocking by script – Detect ad block users via JavaScript and prevent site loading
- Circumventing filter lists – Rotate domain names for ad servers to avoid static blocking
- Legal restrictions – As in Germany where ad blockers are restricted by law
As sites deploy more anti ad-blocking scripts, filter lists eventually catch up to circumventions. However it ends up an endless cat-and-mouse chase.
New anti-blocking approaches focus on throttling page performance for users with ad blockers enabled or showing intermediary offers to whitelist a site. The dynamics between publishers and blockers remain in flux.
Over-Blocking Site Functionality
No filter list is perfect. Often in pursuit of cutting ads, underlying site functionality gets inadvertently broken by blocking relevant domains. Video players, site analytics and live chats commonly suffer issues.
Google aims to limit extension capabilities for this reason citing site integrity concerns. However filter list authors vigilantly debug over-reach reports and quickly fix legitimate issues. Still it’s wise to test across sites when evaluing ad blockers.
There are also emerging technologies on the horizon that could decentralize some filtering capabilities…
While current ad blocking relies on centralized filter lists, new techniques like browser extensions, DNS encryption and VPNs move blocking closer to endpoints.
Manifest V3 Changes
Google Chrome plans restrictions to content blocking APIs in their next Manifest V3 extension update. These limitations have sparked controversy and debate around neutering ad blockers.
Mozilla Firefox has emerged as a pro-privacy alternative vowing to maintain full extension capabilities. As the ad blocking arms race continues, companies are battling for strategic control amid ever increasing web monetization.
DNS and VPN Based Blocking
Rather than extensions, solutions like Adguard DNS provide domain filtering at the network request layer before traffic hits your browser. Mobile ad blockers also commonly use an on-device VPN method.
By handling filtering outside the browser, these solutions ensure full compatibility across devices and limit extension performance overhead. However they require running background services on devices or routers.
On-Premise Network Blocking
For full household ad blocking, on-premise solutions like Pi-hole provide network level ad filtering at your routerdhcp level. Like VPN and DNS solutions, Pi-hole strips ads for all connected devices without any client software required.
However network ad blocking involves managing your own hardware or nuanced DNS server configurations. Turnkey solutions with hosted ad blocking backends simplify deployment across novice users.
While indispensable for eliminating disruptive ads, blockers do raise concerns around funding free publishing of content many take for granted. Here are tips for responsible use:
Be Selective – Don‘t blindly block all ads without considering value exchange. Many sites you rely on daily depend on advertising.
Check Compatibility – Test sites before always-on use and whitelist favorites you want to back. Avoid over-blocking site features.
Value Privacy – Scrutinize if extensions read all browsing data. Open source audited software allows community oversight.
Consider Tipping – If you ad block on sites producing original value, consider direct tips to sustain their livelihood.
Stay Informed – Follow evolving attitudes around ethical usage and site funding issues as blocking reaches ubiquity.
Ideally people dynamically adjust blocking to their needs instead of just installing every list. Websites also adapt code around standard ad blocking use cases. Hitting that balance sustainably likely involves innovations in both technology and business models.
In my decade building analytics across top publishers, I‘ve witnessed the content blocking dynamics between users, publishers and tech intermediaries intensify dramatically. Ad blocking epitomizes the growing schism between privacy conscious individuals and invasive advertising vehicles.
However, promising paths exist by improving site experience around essential ads and exploring alternatives like voluntary tipping. The ultimate solution empowers users with control over destiny and sustainable value flows.
As ad blocking permeates all facets of digital experience, its role will remain contentious yet essential. This guide aimed to give definitive technical background and impartial perspective for navigating ongoing turbulence between interests at stake.
While indispensable for eliminating disruptive ads, widespread blocking raises fair concerns around legal restrictions and funding invaluable yet free publishing. However, solutions balancing interests exist through improving site compatability, exploring alternative value flows and providing user control. Ad blocking continues permeating across all facets of digital experience while sparking ongoing debates around individual rights pitted against invasive advertising vehicles financing much of consumer internet. This guide provided impartial reference to navigate the turbulent dynamics between conflicting interests. Promising paths exist by empowering users control over their online destiny while sustaining equitable value creation and livelihood – ad blocking has and will remain at the epicenter of reconciling this defining challenge of modern digital society.
