Up on the new use of custom size of AdSense, I began to check on the ad blocking rate on this blog. The statistics below was of the ad unit at top of page (yjlv-posts-top), which only is displayed once on every page:

Date RangeAd viewsPage viewsView rateBlock rate
2013-12-16–2013-12-228841,43661.56%38.44%
2013-12-23–2013-12-298071,19767.42%32.58%
2013-12-30–2014-01-059371,41266.36%33.64%
2014-01-06–2014-01-121,1131,63268.20%31.80%
2014-01-13–2014-01-191,1351,71566.18%33.82%
Total4,8767,39265.96%34.04%

Ad views are “page views” of channel yjlv-posts-top from AdSense report and Page views are “pageviews” from Google Analytics report. Since both Google products relies on JavaScript, and the ad unit only displays once, I am sure the collected data would not be skew. The “pageviews” from Analytics should be the maximum view count of ad views, when no ad blocker is used.

I waited for five weeks, or 35-day time span, because the time period cut through the Christmas and then New Year holidays. I thought the vacation might affect the data, but it turns out there isn’t much difference to be seen, all around 30-something %.

Frankly, I was expecting the blocking rate is much higher, somewhere around 75%, even it’s just a guessing, I felt that blocking rate would be more realistic. 34.04% seems much lower, but it’s what the data tells me.

Honestly, I did believe everyone on the Internet was using ad blocker or some sort of measure to stop whatever the reason we want to make an excuse. From the number above, it’s not the case. Only one third of people who visit my blog have ad blockers turned on.

Believe or not, I actually hope everyone uses ad blocker if there is no options given by the publishers and ad service providers. Nonetheless, there is still bad providers, so, in the end, it doesn’t matter much if visitors have the choices or not.