The adblockers, those navigator extensions that allow blocing the banners of a website, experienced a great boom in recent years, partly because of the excess of intrusive advertising formats that use many platforms. Now, with greater awareness about the importance of usability, they seem less necessary … but they continue to be used massively in the digital ecosystem.
Spain exceeds the average use of adblockers in the world
As every year, the We are social creative agency, in collaboration with Meltwater, has launched its Global Overview Digital, a report with which they count the different aspects of the current digital world. The use of adblockers is one of their study issues, and in this 2025 edition we see how Spain It has held in the thirteenth put with him 33.5% of users over 16 years of age who use Adblockers. In 2024, the percentage was 32.5%
Worldwide, the number of users who use Adblockers also decreased, moving from an average of 32.5% to an average of 31.3%.
One possibility is that the generalized implementation of adblockers detectors, which prevent content visualization while the user does not deactivate the adblocker, has led to the abandonment of this type of tools by users. Such as the case of YouTube, which in recent years has undertaken an intense battle against users who use advertisement blockers in the player, even developing a whole system of sanctions. It must be taken into account that the income generated by this advertising system allows many of the websites to remain afloat.
The generation of young adults carries the baton in the use of adblockers
According to the report presented, most Internet users who use this type of tools are men. In the graph below, we can see that the study has section the audience in 6 groups different depending on their age ranges: 16 to 24 years, 25 to 34 years, 35 to 44 years, 45 to 54 years, 55 to 64 years and from 65 years and older. In all of them, the male public surpasses the feminine.
Making a review of all groups we see that, as in the last edition, the one with the greatest representation in the use of Adblockers is that of young adults, between 25 and 34 years. Within it, men have an estimate of 35.4%, showing a decrease compared to last year (36.5%).
This graph also confirms that from 34 years and older, the use of these tools has a downward trend, both in the case of men and women. Although it surprises that the age strip of 65 -year -old users makes more use of adblockers than users between 55 and 64 years, although it is a minor difference.
Why do we use adblockers
Having already studied who and how much advertisement blocking tools are used, we must now study the reasons why users decide to use them. Heading the list with a 64.4% (versus 62.9% in the previous edition) The main reason is that there are too many ads in its navigation.
The second reason, with 55.2% is that “the ads are put in the middle”, referring to those ads that force an interaction with the user to be eliminated to continue with navigation or can refer to those intrusive ads that They deteriorate navigation. Last year, this reason represented 54.4%.
They follow: to protect your privacy (40.4%)because the ads are not relevant (39.9%), the content is inappropriate (38.2%), to improve the operation of the device (31.1%) and, finally, for the company to stop collecting information personal (24.9%).
What happened last year
In the last edition, Spain It descended two positions in the list, located as the fifteenth country with the highest percentage of use of these advertisement blocking tools in the world. The quota of users who use these tools was 33.6%, compared to 36% of the previous year.
Internationally there was also a decrease in average, going from 35.7% to 32.5% (world average).
