Adblock Plus Reduces University's Network Traffic By 25 Percent

Mickeycaskill writes: Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada claims it cut 25% of its network traffic (40% of video traffic) by deploying Adblock Plus across its internal network. The study tested the ability of the Adblock Plus browser extension (PDF) in reducing IP traffic when installed in a large enterprise network environment, and found that huge amounts of data transfer were saved by blocking web-based advertisements and video trailers. The experiment was carried out over a period of six weeks. Disclaimer: the study was funded by Adblock Plus.

Comments

I believe it...

[dark.nebulae]

Even though it's funded by adblock, I still believe it. May not be such high percentages, but it will certainly take a measurable chunk away.

Individual sites cry foul because they cannot meet their advertising targets affecting their revenue, but from the point of view of the user that is active on the net they are bombarded by advertising. Stripping even 10% away can be a good thing...

Re:I believe it...

[Mr D from 63]

There are few things that bug me more than a page load delay waiting for an ad url to respond.

Re:I believe it...

[chihowa]

I never said anything about boring people. If you need to actually present something instead of just handing out a document, then you should focus on presenting and not just showing text in the most inefficient format possible and then proceeding to read it from the screen.

In my field, that means showing the plots of your data instead of a wall of text describing your interpretation of them (and then reading that wall of text). If you're not interacting with your audience then you're not aware of how well you're delivering the information.

The point of a presentation is to deliver information by speaking. The point of a presentation aid like Powerpoint is to help you show things that you can't say or emphasize things that you can say. If you're just a talking head reading your slides out loud for the presumably literate audience, then you're just wasting everybody's time.

If you can't be bothered to efficiently use a medium, then proceed to blame that ineptitude on your audience, try again.

Now if only Slashdot would get rid of video ads.

[hackwrench]

Slashdot even had an ad that hijacked the browser and kept pulling the page back to the location of the ad on the page.

Text article with video ads

[tepples]

I could see 25% if you handling mostly text/images. But with streaming services, I feel like it'd be a bit less.

What tips the scale is the fact that a lot of sites stick video ads into text/image articles.

I'm surprised it's not more.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Even though it's funded by adblock, I still believe it. May not be such high percentages, but it will certainly take a measurable chunk away.

I'm surprised it's not more.

Perhaps that's me, though. My browsing tends to be sites, such as Slashdot, where the meat I'm after is text, and the site's chaff is mainly icons, formatting-prettys, buttons, and other things that are static, image-light, and either susceptable to substantial compression or rendeded by the browser from small descriptions. Ads, meanwhile, tend to be image-rich, moving, and flashy, and designed for the add site's customer (who has litte concern for the viewer's costs) which chews up bandwidth.

I'll presume it's so low either because others browse more bandwidth-intensive sites or site designers, in this age of broadband and optimized-only-for-appearance site design tools, are also not interested in keeping the bandwidth down (and the resulting performance up).

Individual sites cry foul because they cannot meet their advertising targets affecting their revenue, but from the point of view of the user that is active on the net they are bombarded by advertising. Stripping even 10% away can be a good thing...

For reducing viewer distraction, cutting bandwidth costs, and avoiding delays in web-page rendering.

I NEED to suppress the ads when I'm at the ranch, with only slow dialup. A single image can make a page take minutes to load, when it could have been up in a second or less. So imagine one surrounded by banner ads, sidebar ads, embedded ads, footer ads, and so on. One animated ad can make the page take half an hour or more to load, and dynamic content can make it never finish at all, as the content changes outstrip the bandwidth.

I even browse Slashdot with a configuration hack corresponding roughly to enabling firefox's long-lost "delay image loading" option. To do otherwise, even in classic mode and with "patron status or enough karma to disable ads", would be impractical.

Without adblock plus AND noscript, (and maybe flashblock,) I'd be off the web when out of town.

God Damnit

[StikyPad]

The first rule of AdBlock Plus is that you do not talk about AdBlock Plus.

THE SECOND RULE OF ADBLOCK PLUS IS THAT YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT ADBLOCK PLUS!

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Re:AdBlockBlock

[pla]

would it also be acceptable for YouTube to retaliate against the user of such proxy or extension by blocking the display of the video that plays after the preroll video ad?

Absolutely! But when Joe Sixpack eventually figures out that "nothing works" at YouTube, he will stop going there.

Also keep in mind that a lot of actual "content" consists of little more than advertisements in itself. Product reviews (even teardowns), music videos, movie trailers - Do you think YouTube wants to block someone from watching the real ad, just because they skipped the pre-ad?

Re:If neither party is willing to foot the whole b

[sims 2]

YES but we are not allowed the option.