# Ad Blocking

## Windscribe Used on Sparknotes

**With Ad Block**


**Without Ad Block**


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## Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful

Although online advertising has increased within the last decade, so has the number of people who use an ad blocker. The increase in ad blocking rates correlate especially with the increase in targeted online ads. In fact, online advertising is the least trusted form of advertising.

Advertising can be a form of signaling, or "an action that sends a credible message to a potential counterparty" (Marti 2017). What makes it credible is the fact that advertisers are willing to spend large amounts of money to demonstrate how their product is high quality. Advertising also helps combat information asymmetry, where buyers have less information about a product than sellers do. However, when an advertising medium gets too noisy, it becomes difficult to distinguish high-quality sellers from low-quality sellers. This breaks down its credibility.

This same principle can be applied to targeted advertising. While not every advertiser who chooses targeting is deliberately deceptive, deceptive communication can still occur. As more users learn about targeting, the value of the entire medium goes down. Thus, even the value of non-targeted online ads decreases. For many consumers, the biggest issue of targeted ads is concern over privacy.

I have personally used an ad blocker for a few years now. Although I do get creeped out by ads for products that I've only searched up once, the biggest reason I use an ad blocker is because I find pop ups and banners annoying. Even if I am interested in the product being advertised, I find ads to be a distraction from the web page I'm browsing. The current ad blocker I use is Windscribe, which is also a VPN service.