Internet Ad Blocking—TiVo on Steroids Posted on July 23, 2008 Post a comment

What if your TiVo went beyond just blocking ads and eliminated all traces of every ad on your TV? The programming would show up commercial free, with no commercial interruptions. No fast forwarding of commercials would be necessary because they would have been stripped out before they reached your set. And what if it was free? Would you use it? What would it do to television as we know it?

Well, such ad blocking capability exists today on the Internet, and it is free. Perhaps the most popular product is called Adblock. According to Mozilla, about 20 million copies have been downloaded that are compatible with its Firefox browser. An estimated four million daily users block virtually all Web ads. No pop-ups, no banners, no in-page display ads. Furthermore, it doesn’t leave gaping holes where the ads were, and it will re-size and restructure the page layout as well.

Considering that the Internet Advertising Bureau estimates the Internet advertising market to be about $25 billion, this is not a trivial matter. Of course, television advertising has withstood onslaughts from commercial-free pay channels like HBO, and also the VCR, TiVo, and DVRs. Radio still stands despite the availability of hundreds of commercial-free channels on satellite. It is likely the Internet will survive as well, but this will definitely be a driving force in shaping the medium. As advertisers concerned about limited ad budgets, this one bears watching.