How to Deal With Intrusive Ads

The internet is rife with ads, and more often than not, they’re annoying. Ads can get so aggressive and intrusive that they can completely ruin your online experience. If you’ve had enough, then you’re ready for some resources that help you fight back against the ad invasion. These five tips will give you more than enough.

Get an Ad Blocker

It seems intuitive enough. If ads are the problem, deploy software that stops ads. There are free ad blockers for every major web browser, and they tend to be pretty effective. You can look at reviews and ratings to pick a loved ad blocker, and it will probably solve most of the problem for you.

There’s a secondary advantage to ad blockers that won’t apply to any other tip in this article. You can get ad blockers that work across your device. Instead of a blocker that is just on your browser, there are versions that will work with your browser and other apps.

Here’s an example. You can get AdGuard for most major browsers. You can also get it as an app for mobile systems (or even Windows). If you go for the latter, it will block ads when you browse the internet on your phone. On top of that, it will block ads that might pop up on YouTube, TikTok or other apps that you use on the phone. This makes it a more thorough defense than many other options.

It is without question the easiest and most effective step you can take.

But, it’s not a perfect solution. Some sites that you like might have software that gets around your ad blocker. Others will deny you access until you disable the ad blocker. That will force some decisions upon you, but otherwise, an ad blocker is your best defense.

Use Private Browsing

Private browsing is another effective tool. Essentially, private browsing works in a way that websites cannot see your browsing data (or as much data as they otherwise could). This prevents targeted ads from knowing what to do with you, and in a lot of cases, you will see fewer ads as a result.

The drawback to private browsing is that sites can’t customize your experience based on your typical activity. For some people, that’s a good thing. For others, the customized experience is nice.

Either way, private browsing by itself is not a total ad-blocking tool. It’s a piece of a broader approach that gets rid of the most annoying ads.

Adjust Your Browser Settings

All of the modern major browsers include features that help mitigate ads and spam. The specifics of these options depend on the browser you use, but they trend towards providing the same things.

For instance, you can turn off automatic pop-out windows. When you do this, ads that try to pop out or take over your screen won’t work. Consequently, some pop-out video players also won’t work, so there’s always a trade-off at play.

But, if you take the time to customize your browser settings, you can improve your general experience.

Clear Saved Data

This is overlooked far too often. As a lot of ads use cookies to target you and customize what you see, saved data is important to the process. Private browsing and cookie settings can help with that particular component of how ads work, but there’s a lot more at play.

A lot of ads create temporary files or folders on your device. These are nested within the usual temporary folders for your browser and/or operating system. Generally, they’re not a big deal, but the most intrusive ads can use these temporary files to ensure that every time you open the browser or navigate to a new page, you get hit again.

The solution is to clear out all of those files and folders on a regular basis. You can manually go through and empty them on a daily or weekly basis, or you can automate the entire process. A free PC cleaner tool is a great resource for getting rid of unnecessary files and folders, and it will sweep away the temporary files that power the most annoying ads.

Avoid Bad Sites

At the end of the day, the most intrusive ads tend to come from a handful of sites that you interact with. If they’re that bad (especially after trying some of these other tips), then just stop using those sites. It’s fun to follow clickbait for a few minutes of entertainment, but if the ad bombardment is too much, you don’t have to take the bait.

Avoiding sites that have already frustrated you is the most reliable way to keep intrusive ads off of your device.

As you might have deduced by now, there is no perfect solution. In fact, most of these tips work best when used in tandem with each other. There are multiple actions you can take to fight back against annoying ads. Mix and match all of them until you customize your experience. You can use the internet the way that you like and keep ads at bay. You’ll probably never have a truly ad-free experience, but you can definitely mitigate how much they disrupt whatever you’re trying to do.

Rupali Gupta

Rupali Gupta is a blogger and professional writer who loves to write about technology and entertainment. Techzimo is one of her successful websites filled with great tech news, Know more about her on Youtube Facebook Twitter Linkedin Instagram