Annoyed Users: Ads and Ad-Block Usage in the Wild

Content and services which are offered for free on the Internet are primarily monetized through online advertisement. This business model relies on the implicit agreement between content providers and users where viewing ads is the price for the "free" content. This status quo is not acceptable to all users, however, as manifested by the rise of ad-blocking plugins which are available for all popular Web browsers. Indeed, ad-blockers have the potential to substantially disrupt the widely established business model of "free" content, currently one of the core elements on which the Web is built. In this work, we shed light on how users interact with ads. We show how to leverage the functionality of AdBlock Plus, one of the most popular ad-blockers to identify ad traffic from passive network measurements. We complement previous work, which focuses on active measurements, by characterizing ad-traffic in the wild, i.e., as seen in a residential broadband network of a major European ISP. Finally, we assess the prevalence of ad-blockers in this particular network and discuss possible implications for content providers and ISPs.

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