Personality Traits and Ad-block Use : A descriptive investigation of personality traits among ad-block users

Sammanfattning: Advertisements have been in digital media for most of its lifetime. They have, however, been increasing with the years and more people are finding the number of advertisements to be excessive. Online users have therefore taken to avoiding advertisements by installing ad-blockers. There have been multiple studies on how ad-blockers work and why people use them. There have also been studies on which demographics mostly use ad-blockers. Younger men are generally seen as the typical ad-block user. However, none have seen if certain personality traits are more common amongst ad-block users. The purpose of this research is therefore to investigate if there are any differences in personality traits amongst ad-block users and non-ad-block users. The Big Five Inventory with 10-questions (BFI-10) personality test is used in an online survey to get an understanding of participants ad-block usage and personality traits. The personality traits that stood out were among females ad-block users with the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism. The purpose of the study is to indicate a possible way for advertisers to prohibit their message to fall on uninterest and ad-avoiding recipients, and to provide some insights regarding ad-block user segmentation among Swedish ad-block users.