To Block or Not to Block: Can UX and Digital Advertising Be Friends? | UserTesting Blog
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Jennifer DeRome Jennifer DeRome
6 min read
To Block or Not to Block: Can UX and Digital Advertising Be Friends? | UserTesting Blog

It's a rare occasion that I pay attention to an advertisement-let alone enjoy one. I've gone to great lengths to avoid ads. Years ago I got rid of cable and started to watch my favorite TV shows online through services like Hulu, or on DVDs (remember those?) from Netflix. I avoided websites that displayed lots of ads and stopped reading articles if too many ads popped up while reading. I was as ad-free as one could be, and for a while, it was glorious. But advertisers caught on pretty quickly and digital ads began to take over. Pop-ups and banner ads soon covered a large portion of every digital page and it was nearly impossible to avoid them (or worse cases, accidentally click on them, spawning a deluge of potentially malicious ads, quietly planting malware on my computer).