What is Ad Blocking?

Ad blocking is a set of techniques used to prevent the displaying of advertisements in a web browser. Through network interception, DOM filtering, and custom scripts, an ad blocker can completely exclude promotions, trackers, and annoyances from a web browsing session. This can improve security, stability, and performance.

While the benefits to human users is obvious, many people overlook the benefit ad blocking can have on browser automation. After all, your scripts’ performance and stability matter a great deal for the cost-effectiveness and the reliability of your features for end-users. For instance, ad blockers can prevent unnecessary network requests during web scraping. And they can ensure your tests are not hindered by pop-ups or unexpected page transformations.

Consider a web crawler designed to alert you of news related to your brand. You need this script to be reliable and fast so that it can run frequently. And you also need to traverse the content of many different domains. In this circumstance, enabling an ad blocker in your crawler can ensure greater stability with minimum overhead due to network traffic, regardless of which third-party scripts a given news platform uses on their site. A major win for very little effort.

How can BrowserCat help with blocking ads?

With BrowserCat, users can effortlessly implement ad-blocking capabilities into their browser automation workflows. Leverage our browsers, without the headache of setting up an ad-blocking service yourself. Our service cuts down on unnecessary code complexities, helps speed up your automation time, and enhances the quality and accuracy of your testing measures.

Take the first step to streamline your web automations with BrowserCat – a powerful ally for ad-free browser automations.