Advertisements have been with us for a long time. They exist to promote products and services and help pay for valuable content that adds to our lives. Lately however, the ads and pop ups have gotten out of control. While online sites need to generate revenue with advertisements, they’ve gone way too far overboard and are so riddled with junk that it is preventing users from going to their sites altogether.
If you find yourself constantly battling ads and pop ups, there is a free tool for your Chrome web browser that blocks all non native advertisements and helps improve your online browsing experience. It is the Adblock Plus plugin and is free download here. If you use Safari you can download the Adblock Plus plugin here.
Once you go to Adblock Plus, simply hit the “Install for Chrome or Safari” button in green and you’ll be ad free.
Adblock Plus does set its plug in to allow some advertisements that are “responsible” as it understands that online media sites to need to generate a source of income. However if you want to turn them off, simply goto the settings tab, at the top right of your browser, and turn them all off.
All you have to do is check the boxes to enable which ads you want off.
Once installed there is no need to restart your browser or computer. It removes all of the annoying ads like the ones where there are links to Amazon below a product review. Those links are “affiliated” where the site gets a large cut of the sales and can skew a reader’s perspective if that information is not disclosed. Many readers are starting to catch onto sponsored reviews that aren’t disclosed and are becoming more distrusting because of it.
Keep in mind, Adblock Plus does not block native advertisements where they are published like other news or editorial posts within a publication. Those should be marked “sponsored” or “promoted”. If they are not, and labeled as a normal post, that is what falls under “fake news” or “fake content” which is what Google, Facebook and other media giants are looking to fight.
What you will find rather amazing after installing AdBlock Plus is how much space was taken up by advertisements. Some sites will have entire sections missing.
Learn more about the Adblock Plus tools at adblockplus.org.