Ad Filtering - Benefits of Ad Filtering

Benefits of Ad Filtering

To users, the benefits of ad blocking include quicker loading and cleaner looking Web pages free from advertisements, lower resource waste (bandwidth, CPU, memory, etc.), and privacy benefits gained through the exclusion of the tracking and profiling systems of ad delivery platforms. Blocking ads can also save minimal amounts of energy.

Users who pay for total transferred bandwidth ("capped" or pay-for-usage connections) including most mobile users worldwide, have a direct financial benefit from filtering an ad before it is loaded. Streaming audio and video, even if they are not presented to the user interface, can rapidly consume gigabytes of transfer especially on a faster 4G connection. In Canada, where users without a data plan often pay C$0.50/megabyte ($500/gigabyte) for at least the first 50-100MB exceeding their data allowance, the cost of tolerating ads can be intolerable. Even fixed connections are often subject to usage limits, especially the faster connections (100Mbit/s and up) which can quickly saturate a network if filled by streaming media. The extent of unlimited bandwidth plans is often grossly over-estimated by US and European users and advertisers. This problem affects other countries, especially those with bandwidth limitations on their global Internet connections, or those that have poor regulatory or effective monopoly providers.

To advertisers, the benefits include not angering or annoying users into blocking, defaming or boycotting their products or websites. Few advertisers actually intend to anger end users. Very sophisticated filtering and anti-spam techniques can involve active defenses which can shut down an advertiser's domains or brokers, ban them from searches or target them for other countermeasures. Some countries have even considered banning the use of certain ports, e.g. South Korea's proposed ban on port 25 used by SMTP. Future countermeasures would be likely to include bans on ads South Koreans are unlikely to want or even ad brokering services. Ad substituting is also a legal and common practice already, for instance in Canadian cable TV where regulations permit showing a Canadian channel with Canadian ads instead of a US channel with US ads, where both are broadcasting the show simultaneously - this practice has spread to the web with some cable Internet providers uniformly substituting foreign ads, for local ones for which they receive a share of the revenue. Avoiding national, provider or technological interference with their ads is a priority for advertisers and especially brokers of advertising, to whom it could be fatal.