How do ad blockers work?

Transcript

So how do ad blockers work? Welcome to another episode of my series, How the Heck Does That Thing Work? Where I teach you how the heck that thing works. Let's chat about ad blockers, shall we? An ad blocker works off of something called a filter list. And this is a massive, constantly updated list of known ad servers and tracking scripts. When a webpage loads, it requests content from a bunch of different servers, some for the article or whatever it is you're looking at, and some just for ads. The ad blocker checks each request against that filter list before the page even loads. If a request matches a known ad server, it gets blocked before any of that content ever reaches your screen. And that's why ad blockers also speed up page loading because you're not downloading the ad content in the first place. And filter lists get updated constantly. And that's because ad networks try to change their servers to try to dodge those ad blockers. Some ad blockers also strip out the invisible tracking pixels that follow you across websites. But that is a whole other conversation. It feels like magic, but it is not. It is just an ad blocker. It is a well-maintained block list, doing its job, blocking those ads, so you don't have to see them. We love that. Do you use an ad blocker? Let me know in the comments.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.