# Adblocking

We encounter an average of **6,000** to **10,000** ads every single day! (Sam Carr, PPC Protect). This number may seem large, but we must consider that we are constantly exposed to online marketing, billboards, newspapers TV promoting, among others. The rapid increase of ad exposure is due to the presence of third-party ads found online.

As a result, adblocking has become more prominent, as users are concerned about their privacy and how their information can be used by third parties. This change in interest in privacy occurred in 2009/2010 when users started to become worried that ads were "following them around" (Don Marti, 201706).

For this exercise I first looked at a CNN article, as seen below. In this article you can see various ads targeted to me and my previous web searches. This includes online clothing stores that I visited such as "The Real Real," "Intermix" and "Princess Polly." These targeted ads even include the exact clothing pieces that I was looking in those websites mentioned.

I used uBlock Origin extension to Google Chrome to see the difference this would have on the same CNN article. With the adblocker the website did not displace any ads, as can be seen in the pictures below. This was shocking as I had gotten used to seeing ads as the norm. The adblocker makes the content clearer and it is less distracting when reading it.

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### **CNN Article** "Biden says US on pace to hit his administration's goal of 100 million Covid-19 vaccine shots on Friday"

Before Ad Blocking




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After Ad Blocking