Ad-blocking: A study on performance, privacy and counter-measures

Kiran Garimella, Orestis Kostakis, Michael Mathioudakis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many internet ventures rely on advertising for their revenue. However, users feel discontent by the presence of ads on the websites they visit, as the data-size of ads is often comparable to that of the actual content. This has an impact not only on the loading time of webpages, but also on the internet bill of the user in some cases. In absence of a mutually-agreed procedure for opting out of advertisements, many users resort to ad-blocking browser-extensions. In this work, we study the performance of popular ad-blockers on a large set of news websites. Moreover, we investigate the benefits of ad-blockers on user privacy as well as the mechanisms used by websites to counter them. Finally, we explore the traffic overhead due to the ad-blockers themselves.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationWebSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Web Science Conference
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages259-262
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450348966
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 25 2017
Externally publishedYes
Event9th ACM Web Science Conference, WebSci 2017 - Troy, United States
Duration: Jun 25 2017Jun 28 2017

Publication series

NameWebSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Web Science Conference

Conference

Conference9th ACM Web Science Conference, WebSci 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityTroy
Period6/25/176/28/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications

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