# Adblocker

## First Website

1) 1. The first website i visited was Polygon which is a famous website for gamers looking to find information about specific details within a game. The game I am currently playing and am interested in is Hogwarts Legacy and specifically these Demiguise Statues placed throughout the map. Here is what the Polygon website looks like without the adblocker:-


Here is what it looks like with the adblocker on:-


The interesting part of this website was that none of these ads were particularly targeted towards me. I feel this definitely has to do with the fact that I do not use Microsoft edge very often and is a clear example of signaling breaking down and this ad can be seen as simply noisy.

## Second website

2) The second website I visited was Reddit, specifically the R/Sbubby page, that is known to regularly have “promoted” or “sponsored” posts between real user posts. In this case, the ads were fiercely more targeted towards me as I was scrolling through the HelloFresh website, a popular grocery delivery service, and immediately say a targeted ad for when I turned off the ad-blocker as seen below:-


Here is what it looks like with the adblocker on:-


The emergence of the HelloFresh ad immediately after searching for it is an example of targeted ads succedding in collecting information about me as a user and my preferences and then retargeting me on another website. The most shocking part of doing this exercise is that I did not notice the absence of the ad when I first scrolled the page. I simply thought that the page refreshed and there was just a different post. This speaks to the phenomena of "Banner blindness" that all users experience when they become accustomed to the visual noise.

## Third website

3) The third website I visited was Buzzfeed which showed my more targeted advertisements about the new John Wick movie which is also something I searched up directly before going onto the Buzzfeed website. Since there isn’t much information about me on Microsoft edge, it seems like these ads are very directly targeted in their approach in making use of information asymmetry. Furthermore, Since UBlock origin does not take part in the Acceptable ads scheme, all ads are removed including sponsored content. I also performed the same practice on my main browser, Mozilla Firefox, where I use AdBlocker Plus which is known to participate in acceptable ads. To no surprise, I started to notice that my internet browsing experience was filled with these acceptable ads. This exercise has brought to light the frustrating truth about advertising online and I will be switching to UBlock Origin immediately.


Here is what the website looks after using the Adblocker:-


After clicking on some of these clickbait ads and being led to fake websites posing to be popular ones like bestBuy and amazon, It makes me think whether we will ever truly be rid of advertisements. Or will the ads evolve and just find new ways to invade our lives. We went from TV ads to pop-up ads online to now having sponsored content. Its no surprise people dislike targeted ads, but it seems ads have become more subtle and have found ways to get past most Adblockers.