The(ere is no) effect of pop-up appeals on whitelisting behaviour
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2021-07-01
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en
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The rising use of Ad-blockers threatens companies and free content providers relying on advertisement revenue. While aiming to find an effective Ad-block reduction strategy for the client of this research project ‘procyclingstats.com’, it was also an objective to establish a proof of concept and contribute to the lack of research on countering Ad-blocking behaviour. The present study examined the effectiveness of pop-up appeals to reduce Ad-block usage on procyclingstats.com. We hypothesized that any appeal condition would be more effective than a control-appeal condition to reduce Ad-block usage. We also hypothesized that the control-appeal condition would yield a higher rate of whitelisting than the natural rate of whitelisting. The experiment comprised 24076 Ad-block users, which were exposed to one of twelve pop-up appeals and monitored for several days regarding their Ad-block usage. Ad-block users’ intention could be deducted from their response to the pop-up appeal, while their behaviour could be deducted from monitoring their Ad-block usage. The results indicate no significant difference in whitelisting behaviour between any appeal condition and the control condition; all conditions showed a whitelisting rate of 14.9%. Moreover, the control-appeal condition showed an equal decrease in Ad-block usage to the natural rate of whitelisting. The present study offers new insights in the effectiveness of pop-up appeals suggesting that they are unsuccessful to reduce Ad-block usage. Keywords: Ad-block usage, Ad-block users, pop-up appeals, whitelisting
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen