32% of Internet Users in Pakistan Use Adblock: Report

More than 12 million people in Pakistan are actively using adblock software and plugins to limit the amount of ads they face on the internet. This number includes both mobile and desktop users, and points to the increased adoption of adblocking tools with time.

These findings were reported by PageFair, an organization which recently published statistics about adblock usage across the world. The data in the report was collected up to December 2016.

The report mentions that 32% of all internet users (numbering 12 million+ people) in Pakistan use an adblock software. The (un)surprising part is that this figure has gone up by 65% from last year’s stats.

The report had several interesting statistics about adblock users as well. About 94% of global mobile adblock usage is in Asia-Pacific alone. As visible from the image above, majority of adblock users in Pakistan use it on mobile devices with only 2% of users using an adblock on their PC/laptop.

Despite growing numbers of adblock users in the world, a mere 11% of the total internet users employ and adblock while browsing the web. The total number of devices blocking ads are estimated (according to the report) to be around 615 million.

Online Publishers’ Woes

Adblocking in itself causes online publishers that primarily rely on ad based revenue to lose money. However users are right to block invasive ads that block most of the pages and come between the users and the content they are trying to view/use. You may have faced full screen popup ads with video/audio playing in the background that cannot be skipped.

Those sort of ads are what prompted the rise of adblock usage across the world.

“Adblock Walls”

Some publishers, in an effort to reduce the number of adblocking users visiting their pages, have put up “adblock walls”. These walls don’t let you view the website until you turn the adblock off.

According to PageFair’s statistics, 74% of adblock users stop visiting those websites altogether. Meaning they fail to get users to turn off adblockers, unless they have content not available elsewhere.

As a side note, whitelisting the sites that you visit often or support can help them a lot. The publishers primarily rely on ad revenue to pay their bills. You can white list a site by visiting it and clicking on the adblock extension icon on the top right of your web browser. Simply click “don’t run on this page” to whitelist that site.

Disclaimer: While the information in this article is accurate to the best of our knowledge, ProPakistani does not guarantee the authenticity of the research conducted by PageFair.

A techie, gamer, and Senior Editor at ProPakistani.


  • Awesome! I disabled adblock for a day for propakistani and your site sucks with so many ads!

    No wonder you’ve started sponsored articles :P

    • Propakistani is the only website where I never disable Adblock. There are many reasons behind that:

      1. Being a blogger, I really like the ads shown here on Propakistani. The amazing colour scheme gives me the insight into content marketing. How your ads or banners should be shown to the audience that builds trust and attention.

      2. I support the site as I have been a regular visitor since 2012.

      3. Business Ideas are my favorite. You come across many ideas while seeing the ads. Sometimes you get something great that was not possible while surfing the internet. I have found some fantastic websites.

      When irrelevant ads are shown, I just say Google not to show again. I have set my interest from the ads setting.

      • Good for you! Every site requires those add to earn propakistani is no different. Plus sponsored articles make a good money nowadays anyway!

        Times are changing!

        • I agree, but every site doesn’t show the way it should be. I really hate the pop ads, the CNN shows autoplay video ads that are irritating. Here the ads are balance, fine for me!

    • I visit this site in browsers like Opera, UC and now Chrome but I come across only one or two ads per page. I wonder why you are seeing so many ads here.

    • Root users can block them via host file. Other users can use built-in Ad-block feature in browsers.

        • If you have rooted your android phone, then you can block ads without installing any software that filter ads. There is an app called ‘Adaway’, give root access to this app, it will rewrite the host file. Now you can either keep that app so that it may periodically update host file or you can uninstall the app. I’ve blocked ads in this way on 5 android phones and 1 android TV. You can also unroot the phone afterwards. The ads will remain blocked. For more on host file, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)

    • An Remaining Can Use VPN Type Apps for Blocking Ads Mind it its Pretty Awsome for Non Rooted Devices :p

    • You can use browsers with built in ad-block like Opera and UC Browser on Android. Not sure about iOS

  • You should always use ublock origin instead of adblock or adblock plus. Why? because adblock ON PURPOSE let some ads through because they make money that way, and because ublock origin is PROVEN to use fewer RAM, CPU than adblock or other blockers.

    Also it does not hurt to use Privacy Badger.

  • I use adblock plus on pc/chrome it helped me to avoid the undesirable ads. However it does not block google ads, which are bearable. I also keep giving responses to google ad. so they shuffle ads as per my likes and dislikes.

  • Pity still much of the traffic from developed countries are still making use of desktops rather mobiles, government should have started free mobile scheme rather free laptop.

      • Pity because people sit on desktops for productive purposes, and on mobile for casual browsing. so if most of he users are using internet from mobile devices means resources aren’t being utilized for productive purposes. essentially its pity on us.

  • Yes I use ad blocker because.

    1. Ads to a limit are acceptable. But when there are ads more than the content on page, I am certainly not on a blog page to read ads only.

    2. Ads displayed on most of the blogs, especially local blogs contains explicit contents and are definitely NSFW.

    3. Ads displayed on mobile devices are placed such that to increase accidental clicks. Why would I like to open facebook signup page, when I already have a facebook account :|

  • I don’t use adblock service for any sites especially news including ProPakistani because I know ads are their major source of income. We can help these bloggers only in this way after all they are doing hard job for collecting news for us.


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