If you ask any marketing firm, they will most likely tell you that in the world of advertising “video content is king.” In fact, YouTube states that almost 5 billion videos are watched on their site every single day.
That being said, what I don’t enjoy about today’s video experience is when I have to watch a commercial before the actual video is played. Makes me feel a bit like this grumpy dog.
Well no more! Here’s a great tool that strips out those ads and prevents them from running when you are pulling up videos. It’s called AdBlock. The one I tested is written for the Chrome browser since that is the browser I prefer to use. Firefox also has an AdBlock plug-in and so too does Internet Explorer although it’s called AdBlock Plus and the icon looks a little different. I did not test either of these but I’m guessing they work the same. AdBlock is also free – bonus!
Here’s how it works – once installed into your browser, anytime you go to a website that has video content, it automatically blocks the embedded advertisement and takes you straight to the video you wish to view.
Installation is also very straightforward. Go to the version needed for your browser of choice and click to install, then follow any additional prompts. For Chrome, it installed itself!
Next time you open Chrome you will see the AdBlock icon in the top right corner. If you go to a site with video advertisements it will start blocking embedded ads and show you how many it has blocked. I tested it against a video on YouTube that had previously subjected me to a 30 second ad. After AdBlock had been installed it went straight to the video. Nice!
It’s not perfect – there are some sites that won’t open because of this plugin, and will ask you to temporarily turn AdBlock off if you wish to continue. Forbes.com is one of those sites. You’ll see a page like this when the site detects AdBlock and won’t run unless it is disabled.
Other than a few instances, I have found this to be a great tool to cut out most of those annoying ads.
