Google lists a reason explaining why ad blockers on YouTube are a bad thing

If you have been reading Neowin then you are probably familiar with Google's stance on content blockers like ad blockers on YouTube. For those that may be wondering, the company is definitely not a fan of it as it has been trying to make life harder for users who use such apps and services to block out ads.

For example, earlier this year, Neowin noticed how having an ad blocker on meant that certain affected users were not able to proceed with playing the videos they were trying to watch. And last year in 2024, it was reported that Google was testing unblockable server-side ads on the video platform. Later that same year, the tech giant was also accused of shenanigans regarding the "skip ad" button.

To be fair to Google, there have been instances where bugs in ad-blocking scripts have led to issues on YouTube. And according to a new support article published by it this week, it looks like ad blockers are also impacting the YouTube view counter as Google has blamed content blockers, among other things, as the culprit behind the reduced hits on various videos from different creators.

The company says the ad blockers make view count metrics inaccurate thus leading to bigger fluctuations in the traffic. It writes:

Viewers Using Ad Blockers & Other Content Blocking Tools: Ad blockers and other extensions can impact the accuracy of reported view counts. Channels whose audiences include a higher proportion of users utilizing such tools may see more fluctuations in traffic related to updates to these tools.

With this message, Google likely hopes that creators themselves will begin to encourage their viewers to disable content blockers.

While the reason cited by Google for reduced hits is certainly plausible, it is also noteworthy that with the rise of AI chatbots and AI scrapers, people may simply not be watching a video to get the information they wish to have.

AI summaries are getting popular and Neowin too has seen greatly reduced human traffic over the last year or so since AI search began to be more relevant and popular. Google however claims the opposite.

As an online publication, Neowin too relies on ads for operating costs and, if you use an ad blocker, we'd appreciate being whitelisted. In addition, we have an ad-free subscription for $28 a year, which is another way to show support!