The Use of Ad Blockers Around the World

According to a report published by The Wall Street Journal, Google is planning to add an ad blocker to its popular Chrome browser in a move that seems counterintuitive to say the least. After all, Google is the largest online advertiser in the world and ad blockers are like kryptonite to the company’s business.

As our chart illustrates, the adoption of ad blockers around the world is still relatively low. So why would Google want to integrate ad blocking into its web browser, which according to NetMarketShare has a global market share of more than 50 percent both on desktop and mobile devices?

If you think about it, fighting fire with fire could actually work in this case. According to the WSJ’s report, the ad-blocking feature would filter only certain types of online ads, namely those that are deemed to provide a bad experience for the user. By doing this, Google could keep internet users happy enough not to install third-party ad blockers thus slowing down their rate of adoption and thereby defending its own business.