43% of the US adblock users believe that online publishers should make money by providing paid content
Most American mobile adblock users realize that to provide high-quality content, publishers need to make money. 43,3% of the surveyed respondents answered that a better way to do it is by making content only available to users that pay, while almost 57% believe that ads should be the main source of the revenue for the publishers. Such are the results of the survey conducted by Free Adblocker Browser, a browser for Android users with a built-in adblock feature.
Although adblocking is perceived more as a desktop thing, different studies show that adblocking on mobile has been growing lightning fast. For Free Adblocker Browser, American users are now heading the list – 17% of all the FAB users worldwide come from the US. Every day, they spend about 50 minutes for browsing while using Free Adblocker Browser from their mobile devices. Apart from ads themselves, viruses, malware, scams and privacy issues are top reasons to download an adblocker to a mobile device.
Disliking ads is obviously an initial reason to install and use an adblocker. For some users, it’s essential to keep their browser in a working condition. “On my under-powered phone, some ads actually CRASHED my browser, so I needed an ad blocker”, said a respondent. 21,3% of users believe that adblocker protects them from viruses, malware, phishing, etc. 11,5% of respondents state it’s important for them to keep their privacy protected. Fast browsing is another reason to use an adblocker – it is crucial to 9,4% of respondents. 1,4% of adblocker users are concerned about battery life of their device. Mobile users also understand that ads consume their mobile data that they have to pay for, which also makes them unhappy with ads.
The most unfavorable ad formats are pop-ups – they received almost a half of respondents’ votes. Non-skippable video ads, auto-play video ads, and banners also irritate mobile users.
While adblocking causes major damage to publishers, they try out different ways to retain their revenues. Adblock walls keep users away from viewing the content unless they switch their adblocker off or whitelist the website. However, as the FAB survey results show, adblock walls decrease the number of visitors to those websites. Only 9,3% of users agree to whitelist the website if required. 24,1% of respondents whitelist websites temporarily, and then turn their adblocker on again. 66,5% of users don’t agree to whitelist the website; 42,5% of those leave the page and search for the information elsewhere.
Another option publishers offer to adblocker users are paid subscriptions in return for ad-free content. However, respondents’ answers show that users don’t usually agree to pay for subscriptions when offered. The main reason is that they can find information for free on other websites (44,4%). 17,6% of respondents answered it’s too expensive to pay at every website that asks to sign up. Users are also reluctant to share their personal data while subscribing (15,4% of answers). For 11,4% of users registering takes too much time, which also makes them unhappy. And only 9,2% of respondents stated they sign up for the websites they like and visit often.
Although 60% answered they don’t have any subscriptions now, the rest admitted that they, in fact, are subscribed to a certain number of websites.
Users also understand that nice content does not come from nowhere. 68,4% of FAB users realize that to provide high-quality content publishers need to make money – either by showing ads or by making content available only to users that pay.
“When we asked our users how they think publishers should make money, we found out that a big part of the respondents – 43% – believe that publishers should earn revenues by providing paid content. The second option to this question – by showing ads – received more votes (about 57%), but we cannot ignore the fact that a large number of users are open to the paid content model. However, our survey also showed that subscriptions are not an acceptable variant for the majority of users. Privacy issues, high prices, long registration progress – all these reasons keep users away from contributing to content creators. This is something the industry should consider for improvement,” said Winfried Londar, Free Adblocker Browser founder.
The survey was conducted by Free Adblocker Browser online. 870 browser users provided their responses during Oct 13 – 17, 2017.
Find out the results of the survey in the UK in our blog post.