Online advertising is getting more prominent every year. YouTube is a great example of a popular platform that changed radically because of the increasing amount of ads. This popular video-streaming service is getting more and more ads, which makes it one of the most annoying websites on the Internet.
However, there are many easy ways to get rid of those ads forever. Here are four apps that do the job of blocking YouTube ads.
1. Adblock Plus
Availability: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera
Adblock Plus is a free browser extension that blocks all the ads on the web (including YouTube). The installation of Adblock Plus is very easy, and within 10 seconds you will be protected against all annoying advertising.
Besides blocking annoying ads, Adblock Plus offers additional features of disabling tracking and increasing online security. Extension’s settings are very highly customizable, yet quite easy to understand. The extension successfully blocks all ads on YouTube – no issues were encountered. Moreover, it blocks all ads on other websites, including Facebook ads, banners and pop-ups.
Adblock Plus for every supported browser can be downloaded from the extension’s website.
Rating: 5/5
2. AdBlock Video
Availability: Mozilla Firefox
AdBlock Video is one of many YouTube ad blockers that are available for Firefox. Besides blocking pre-roll video ads on YouTube, the plug-in can be also used on other video streaming websites, such as Fox, CNN and others.
The plug-in does a good job of blocking videos on all major websites, proving that it’s capable of performing its basic functions. A major disadvantage of the AdBlock Video is that only video ads are being blocked, still leaving VEVO channel skins and other annoying ads on YouTube. Also, unfortunately not all latest versions of Firefox are supported. AdBlock Video can be download from the developer’s website.
Rating: 3/5
3. GlimmerBlocker
Availability: Safari
There are not many ad blockers for Safari. However, GlimmerBlocker seems to be one of solutions that actually works. The extension blocks ads all over the web, including YouTube. GlimmerBlocker offers many blocking settings that will suit everyone’s needs.
Pre-roll video ads, VEVO channel skins and annoying homepage ads are successfully blocked, as well as ads on any other website where the extension has been tested. The only ads that went through during testing of the extension were few pre-roll video ads on YouTube videos, which were embedded on other websites (such as Facebook). Clicking on a video link and watching it on its YouTube page solved the issue. The extension filters all traffic through a proxy server, which negatively affects the speed. The installation of the GlimmerBlocker is also slightly more difficult compared to other Safari extensions. Glimmer can be downloaded from the developer’s website.
Rating: 3/5
4. ScrewAds
Availability: Chrome
ScrewAds is a Chrome plugin that blocks YouTube ads, as well as VEVO banners and other annoyances. Its functionality is very limited, yet it blocks all the elements, as you would expect. The plugin works only on YouTube most of the times as advertised. Low memory consumption is definitely a big advantage of the extension. ScrewAds can be downloaded from the Chrome Web Store.
Rating: 4/5
Conclusion
This article gave an overview of all most popular extensions for blocking ads on different browsers – all of them do pretty much the same job in blocking pre-roll ads on YouTube, though the added functionality significantly varies among them. After testing up all the extensions for some time, Adblock Plus seems to be the best solution for every supported browser (GlimmerBlocker is the best option for Safari simply due to the lack of other sustainable alternatives for this browser), because of the extended functionality that allows fully changing the entire browsing experience.