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Adblock Plus Reduces University's Network Traffic By 25 Percent

Posted by Soulskill on from the blocking-youtube-would-cut-the-other-75% dept.

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.

8 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. I believe it... by dark.nebulae · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:I believe it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      We block advertising at the web proxy on our corporate network, and the savings is substantial, easily 25% when I look at the traffic reports/dashboards. Never mind protection from a malware vector, the improved browsing experience and network relief makes ad blocking a no brainer.

    2. Re:I believe it... by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    3. Re:I believe it... by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 5, Funny

      I banned Powerpoint presentations. Saves huge amounts of time, and server space. I don't have figures to support it, but I strongly believe it raises moral and stops a decline in general intelligence.

    4. Re:I believe it... by amicusNYCL · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Local news sites have been some of the worst for me. I found one site that told my browser to keep downloading some resource from an ad network (no idea what it was) as long as the window was open, I just happened to have network tools open to see it. By the time I finished reading the story and closed the page the browser had downloaded tens of MB.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  2. Now if only Slashdot would get rid of video ads. by hackwrench · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  3. Irony is... by Dredd13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... if you visit the first article linked in the story, while using AdBlock, you get a giant pop-up complaining about your doing so. :-)

  4. I'm surprised it's not more. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way