TL;DR version:
From June to August, the number of active users of the AdGuard Ad Blocker extension for Chrome dropped by about 8%. But in late August, the trend reversed. The temporary slump in user growth was offset by the increased demand in the second half of the year.
After a brief period of turbulence that lasted about a month, we saw the trend stabilize. And while the daily number of uninstalls was still higher than before YouTube’s crackdown, it remained consistently lower than the number of daily installs.
After media reports and YouTube’s own statements implied that ad blockers were doomed, and especially after more and more users started noticing that their ad blocking extensions were not working properly on YouTube, we did indeed see a spike in uninstalls. However, at the same time, the number of installs also increased significantly! It may well be that the way ad blockers’ woes were amplified in the media inadvertently boosted their popularity and helped them woo new users.
The takeaway from all of this is that ad blockers — first and foremost, ad-blocking extensions — were rocked by YouTube’s onslaught, but survived. And, moreover, the interest has rebounded, as is evidenced by the growth in the number of active users.
Missing piece in the numbers here is how many people were uninstalling adguard to switch to uBlock? Using one extension’s install stats to make conclusions about all adblocking extensions seems a bit much.
Right? I’ve never even heard of adguard
AgGuard was (is?) big on Android and DNS. Helped to get rid of ads in many apps.
Yeah their DNS url was pretty useful in blocking ads on the go when away from my pihole. But I still preferred uBlock on browsers
May also indicate that users were shopping around for a blocker that worked against Youtube. Maybe some of those users actually just settled with AdGuard coming from ABP, or uBlock, or whoever.
Pretty sure they did that on purpose, trying to skew the narrative. The goal is to make it seem like it’s all doom and gloom because it’ll get people to read the article to the end, and maybe in their minds get some people to stop using adblockers.