Google Ads campaigns, and adblocking plugins

Every entrepreneur, business owner or marketer knows that nowadays, advertising is a key part of the marketing strategy for many companies. Companies often invest large amounts of money in ads to attract customers and increase their profits. Google Ads is one of the most popular advertising platforms, allowing companies to reach their target audience on Google searches. However, many people use ad-blocking plug-ins, which can affect the effectiveness of ad campaigns. In this article, we will discuss how the aforementioned Google Ads campaigns can be affected by ad-blocking plugins and how you can counteract this.

Impact of ad-blocking plugins on Google Ads campaigns

Daily, ads pop up from every angle of our online pages. Not only in the browser but also, for example, on YouTube, in Gmail or in apps. It’s not uncommon for them to obscure windows or content of interest. They also sometimes startle us with a sudden sound. All this makes online ads increasingly annoy us, and we are looking for ways to turn them off. One such solution that users often reach for is ad-blocking plug-ins. Of course, in the case of Google Ads campaigns, ad blocking can be a problem for companies that want to reach their target audience, as such plugins can cause ads not to be displayed, which can limit the effectiveness of ad campaigns and affect its inferior performance. If we look at this issue not only from the level of evaluation of advertising activities, it appears, from the business level – an even bigger problem. If our audiences use ad blockers, we cannot reach them with our advertising message and our products.

How many users are blocking your ads?

A recent study by Backlinko.com shows that over 42% of users worldwide regularly use ad-blocking plugins. Blockthrough.com also shared interesting information in its report. The 2022 data shows that one-quarter of Poles block ads, and as much as 64% of global ad blocking happens on mobile devices. 

How do Polish Internet users compare to Europe? Our 25% is about the EU average, with the French, Spanish, and Germans blocking ads similarly to us. In contrast, Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, and Croats use more adblockers than we do. For comparison, in the United States, 19% of users block ads. 

As the most popular plug-in, of course, Adblock wins; according to statistics, it is used by more than 60 million users. As a marketer, you also need to remember that the Chrome browser gives you the option of using built-in features to block the most intrusive ads. Opera took a different approach, which automatically blocks all display ads.

Google Ads blocking plugins challenge you to promote your brand effectively!

Our knowledge and experience will help you achieve your goals, reach new customers and increase conversions, regardless of ad-blocking plugins.

Let’s talk!

Most popular ad-blocking plug-ins that your viewers can use

1. AdBlock

AdBlock is one of the most popular ad-blocking extensions. This plug-in blocks many types of ads, including those displayed by Google Ads. AdBlock is available for various web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

2. uBlock Origin

uBlock Origin is another popular ad-blocking plugin. It is one of the fastest and most effective ad-blocking plugins, which attracts many users.

3. Ghostery

Ghostery is a plug-in that allows you to block ads and track users’ online activities. This plug-in blocks ads displayed in the browser and allows users to manage their privacy, which may attract many users looking to protect their privacy online.

4. Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus is another popular ad-blocking plugin. This plug-in blocks many types of ads, including but not limited to YouTube ads, making it a very popular add-on for browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

Adblock Plus is a popular plug-in for browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

5 Privacy Badger

Privacy Badger is a plug-in that blocks ads and tracking of users’ online activities. This plugin can block some ads displayed on Google Ads, but its main purpose is to protect users’ privacy.

Privacy Badger.

How do I counteract ad-blocking plugins?

Maintaining Google Ads campaigns and analyzing their results is no small challenge in an era of adblockers and increasingly strict privacy policies. In many ways, advertising giants such as Google are trying to limit the intrusiveness and amount of advertising to the user. 

Some time ago, Google conducted a study on Better Ads Standards to determine the standard of ads and identify those users strongly disapprove of and those they even desire. 

According to the study, what advertising messages and materials should advertisers avoid?”

• advertisements with pop-ups that prevent browsing
• videos with auto-playing sound
• large, static ads covering most of the page and making it impossible to browse (ads taking up more than 30% of the screen space)

You’ve probably noticed that some ads are displayed to you despite the AdBlock plug-in being enabled. How is this possible? After all, the plug-in was supposed to block them? 

This is the fault of one of the plugin’s features – Acceptable Ads, which allows ads considered „neutral” by the algorithm to be displayed. It is enabled by default, so most Internet users may not even know about this possibility. Using this feature not only helps to increase the standard of ads on the Internet, displaying the most friendly ones, but also does not block the entire advertising message.

User-neutral ads – or what kind?”

1. Friendly and non-intrusive ads

Our ads mustn’t interfere with users’ browsing experience. Instead of using aggressive forms of advertising, such as popups or commercial videos that switch on suddenly, it is worth betting on banner ads or text. These ads are less annoying to users and less likely to be blocked by plug-ins.

2. Create attractive advertising content

Ad-blocking plugins are often used by people who find ads boring and unattractive. Therefore, to attract the attention of your audience, you should create attractive advertising content. They should be interesting and engaging and catch the attention of the audience.

3. Use different advertising formats

Many different ad formats can be used in Google Ads campaigns. Different ad formats, such as video ads, image ads, or text ads, can increase the chances of reaching audiences who use ad-blocking plug-ins on news sites, for example, but not on YouTube.

There are many different ad formats that can be used in Google Ads campaigns.

4. The frequency of your graphic ads

If you know that your ads are displaying too often, you can change the frequency settings in your Google Ads panel. Go to your display campaign and then into settings. You’ll find the „Manage display frequency” option when you expand additional settings. Here you can set the frequency of either each ad, each ad group or the entire campaign.  

5. Adapt ads to mobile devices

Today, most users use mobile devices, so it is worth looking at the guidelines according to Better Ads Standards. Among other things, these include the same principles as mentioned above, plus:

• too much ad density (i.e. ads taking up more than 30% of the page)
• fluttering, rapidly changing colours and animated advertising materials
• full-screen ads, forcing users to scroll so they can eventually get to the page content they are interested in

Summary

You’re probably wondering whether running campaigns on Google Ads in the age of popular plug-ins like AdBlock still pays. Admittedly, the popularity of ad-blocking extensions makes this hard to do, but it’s not impossible and you definitely shouldn’t be discouraged! Remember that hundreds if not thousands of users don’t use adblockers, and if you do, installing a plug-in on a computer is much easier than on a phone. Still, most users browse content on mobile along with ads. The most important issue for you as an advertiser is to create ads according to Better Ads Standards. If this is the case, there is no need to worry. On the other hand, if you want to verify the visibility of your ads on both desktop and mobile, I encourage you to check this through the Google Search Console tool. Such analysis will answer whether your ads are too intrusive and annoying, so you can work on improving their effectiveness.