YouTube's War Against Ad Blockers Leads To Record Uninstalls, But Users Are Fighting Back

In a bid to safeguard its ad revenue, video-sharing behemoth YouTube stepped up its campaign against ad blockers in October, leading to an unprecedented wave of uninstalls and installs of these tools. However, users are fighting back.

What Happened: YouTube's offensive against ad blockers is bearing early fruits, according to statistics from ad blocking firms. "Hundreds of thousands" of users uninstalled their ad blockers, reported Wired.

Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google-owned video platform, which relies on ads for nearly 80% of its earnings, scaled up a trial that originated in May. This trial coerced viewers into deactivating their ad blockers or forfeiting the ability to consume content on the site.

See Also: YouTube Premium Prices Skyrocket In More Countries Around The World, Almost Doubling For Some

Concurrently, there was a spike in new ad blocker installs as users scrambled to find alternatives that could bypass YouTube’s pop-up alerts.

However, after the recent crackdown, YouTube users and ad blockers are getting smarter.

For instance, open-source ad blocker uBlock Origin remains resilient against YouTube's recent changes. Other developers are also rolling out changes to their ad block extensions to work around the crackdown.

Why It Matters: This crackdown comes amidst YouTube’s recent global rollout of its anti-ad block policy. The platform’s push to block ad blockers aligns with its strategy to promote YouTube Premium, now for $13.99 per month.

Furthermore, YouTube has also been hiking the price of its Premium service in numerous countries, nearly doubling it in some. These increases follow a similar price hike in the U.S. in July.

Shutterstock/ Sergei Elagin

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.