Ad experience improves but ad blocking still rising

According Adobe, 38% of U.S. consumers say the online ad experience has improved over the past two years, and more than two-thirds (68%) said it was either improving, or at the very least not getting any worse.

Yet, the numbers of people installing and using ad blockers continues to grow rising from 16% of U.S. online population to 18% in the last year. And, found Adobe, the vast majority (89%) of those who already have ad blockers installed are unlikely to uninstall them.

"If U.S. advertisers don't try to address user experience, they can potentially see another 20 million people added to the ad blocking pool based on similar rates we've seen in other countries," said Becky Tasker, Adobe's managing analyst for digital insights.

Adobe's report highlights that the same old reasons for ad blocking remain - over-targeting, too many ads and abuse of personal data. While 78% of consumers said they like personalized ads, only 28% believe they are targeted correctly with a quarter (26%) saying they are too creepy.

While video advertising is currently riding high among publishers and advertisers, just 19% said those ads were relevant or interesting. More than half (57%) said not being able skip an ad in video content was most annoying, and 48% would abandon the video as a result.

Ads in social media were deemed by consumers to be the most interesting and Facebook was rated as the top site for delivering relevant and interesting ads.

Tags: ad blocking, advertising, research, social media, video advertising