Did YouTube's offensive kill ad blockers? Here are the stats
adguard.com
YouTube tried to block video playback for ad-blocking users last year. Some even thought that this global effort would lead to the demise of ad blockers. But that did not happen.

TL;DR version:

  • From June to August, the number of active users of the AdGuard Ad Blocker extension for Chrome dropped by about 8%. But in late August, the trend reversed. The temporary slump in user growth was offset by the increased demand in the second half of the year.

  • After a brief period of turbulence that lasted about a month, we saw the trend stabilize. And while the daily number of uninstalls was still higher than before YouTube’s crackdown, it remained consistently lower than the number of daily installs.

  • After media reports and YouTube’s own statements implied that ad blockers were doomed, and especially after more and more users started noticing that their ad blocking extensions were not working properly on YouTube, we did indeed see a spike in uninstalls. However, at the same time, the number of installs also increased significantly! It may well be that the way ad blockers’ woes were amplified in the media inadvertently boosted their popularity and helped them woo new users.

  • The takeaway from all of this is that ad blockers — first and foremost, ad-blocking extensions — were rocked by YouTube’s onslaught, but survived. And, moreover, the interest has rebounded, as is evidenced by the growth in the number of active users.

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Can you give me an example?

    It took me 5 minutes and five clicks and I’ve been using it for a year on my phone and desktop.

    I don’t consider something that simple and convenient work, so I’m curious what you mean by “less work”. Do you mean the front ends take 3 minutes to install instead of 5 minutes?

    Obviously can’t be down time since you can’t have a less than zero downtime, but what do you mean by “less work”?

    • Toribor@corndog.socialEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Piped.video and Yewtu.be are both web frontends that work in the browser and require no installation.

      Freetube has installers for windows/mac/linux with no need for the overhead of android emulation.

      I haven’t tried this out but I wonder if any of the popular Android youtube clients would work with Windows Subsystems for Android on Win11. It’d be way harder to setup than Bluestacks but would require less overhead.