A new study has found that ad blockers break the internet:
Ad blockers don't just block ads on the internet - they actually break websites such as British Airways and Vodafone, a new study has found.
According to tests conducted on the UK's 100 most popular websites, ad blockers didn't just block pop-ups, but accidentally corrupted useful parts of a website, such as an airline check-in screens or retail order tracking pages. If you were browsing, all you would see is an error message or simply a chunk missing on screen, but no explanation for what was behind it.
In the study by London ad-tech company Oriel, the researchers tested 24 common ad blockers, including Adblock, Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin, on a range of popular websites including BA, Aer Lingus, RyanAir, Vodafone, P&G and Land Rover.
I don’t just use ad blockers but script blocker as well. I do this because many websites link to content that I don’t want on my computer. For example, the script blocker prevents analytics from pulling data from my machine.
Honestly, if a company’s website breaks because of the use of ad-blockers, then you’ve set up your site wrong. Ad placement needs to be strategic and also needs to ensure that if they are blocked, the site remains intact.
So let’s not blame ad-blockers for bad web design.