Consumers have become better at recognizing these advertisements and how brands monitor their online activity. This has caused many consumers to become frustrated at pop-up ads, with some even turning against the companies behind them. For example, MyZone Marketing reported that nearly 80% of consumers don’t like online pop-up ads. As such, many have started using software and internet extensions to avoid seeing these advertisements, a consumer trend likely to continue in 2024.
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How Can You Avoid Pop-Up Advertisements?
1. Use a VPN
One of the best ways to surf the internet without worrying about pop-ups appearing on your laptop is by downloading and using a VPN for PC. Virtual Private Networks will not only hide your IP address from third parties, including cybercriminals, cookies, and advertisements from brands, but some will also block pop-ups and trackers from appearing. You will also get unlimited bandwidth, which means you can surf the internet or watch movies privately and smoothly.
2. Pop-Up Blocker
While some pop-ups are legitimate and serve useful purposes, such as login prompts or confirmation dialogs, many are associated with online advertising and can be intrusive or even malicious. You can install a pop-up blocker directly through your browser. For instance, if you use Google Chrome as your designated browser, you can stop pop-ups from appearing by going to settings and clicking turn pop-ups off.
Among the most popular pop-up blockers is AdBlock, which has over 60 million users and is available through Chrome and Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Android. You can also download Brave, AdGuard, uBlockOrigin, and Adblock Plus for free.
3) Use Apple’s Private Browsing Mode
Another trick to avoid advertisement pop-ups is for MacBook users to browse the Internet through the private window feature. When you’re using the private window feature on Safari, your browsing history is not saved, and the websites you visit won’t track you. When websites can’t track you, the chances of you seeing a retargeting ad on another website are low.
Retargeting ads are very popular in the marketing field as they keep brands top-of-mind as a consumer will visit a website, trigger the retargeting campaign, and then see an advertisement for the same website or product on a different platform or site. However, these campaigns have been scrutinized over the years as consumers have become more skeptical and wary about how much of their online activity is being watched and stored by these companies.
The Internet has become the one-stop shop for various things, from grocery shopping and clothing shopping. Brands recognize this and have started using techniques to attract consumers to their products, including pop-up advertisements in the form of retargeting displays and banner ads. While this may seem like it would be effective, marketers have used this technique too many times, and now consumers have become frustrated at seeing all of these ads when they are surfing the Internet. Fortunately, though, there are many ways around these ads, from downloading a VPN to browsing in private mode.
