# Adblocking
Before Adblocker installation:





After Adblocker installation:



To compare the before and after of the installation of an Adblocker, I viewed *The Guardian*'s live coverage of the midterm election results. Before the installation, several intertwined pop-up ads would appear, disrupting my analysis of the races because they were so distracting. From beginning to end, the article felt double in length because of how many ads there were. After the installation, I had a much easier time reading the coverage without the ad-distractions.

## Readings Engagement
Online ads are ridiculously annoying. They’re ugly, intrusive, and obnoxious…not to mention completely distracting when trying to follow live election updates. So, why do companies still utilize them? Last class we discussed information asymmetry, and how sellers can capitalize on having more information than buyers. Yet as Marti (2017) says, it is not so much the claims made by advertisers that are helpful, but the fact that they are willing to spend extravagant amounts of money on a product that is informative.

Online ads bring clickers to landing page URLS that are designed to send people to a specific area of their website (Sharma, 2022). For example, the top banner ad from my election coverage article led me directly to Sak’s “Holiday Gift Giving Guide”, not just the main page of their site. Not surprisingly, the cookies then tracked my click to Saks and sure enough, on my phone, the same advertisement appeared on a different page. The increased targeting only made me want to install the ad blocker even more. Marti says 66 percent of adult Americans do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests. From cookies that track my online browsing, sites know I frequently visit Saks online for fun. If Marti’s claim about signaling holds true, Saks is less concerned with me actually utilizing their ridiculously overpriced gift guide, but rather wants me to know they have the money to advertise and believe the product will earn enough repeat sales (Marti).

Personally, I’m confused by Marti’s logic surrounding signaling because I feel like I really pay no attention to online ads, no matter how targeted they are. They have become so ingrained in our digital lives, whether on social media or on our online cookbooks, that I’ve desensitized to them. This is known as “banner blindness”, which says the visual noise of web ads begins to be tuned out over time. If it hadn’t been for this assignment, I wouldn’t have paid attention to what ads I was being shown. I’m curious to utilize Adblock Plus when it launches and test myself to see if their “goods ads” can make me click on them (Kastrenakes, 2016).