How To Block Adverts on Facebook & Youtube

Blocking adverts on Facebook & Youtube is just as easy as blocking other ads on the internet. Simply Install and activate Adblock Plus.

The kinds of adverts you see on Youtube and Facebook are very different. On Youtube you get some banners, overlay adverts and video adverts. The video adverts are short videos played before content, I often find they are actually the same adverts I see on TV! The overlay adverts pop-up a little way into the video, can either be text or banner and obscure the video. That's exactly the kind of advert, one that obscures the content, that is explicitly forbidden in the Adblock Plus acceptable ads policy. Luckily all 3 of the ad types on Youtube get blocked by default with APB.

Facebook Adverts are something altogether different, they have 7 standard formats and many more supplemental formats. Blocking all of those is a bit more complicated, luckily Adblock and their awesome community have you covered.

Block Facebook Ads

We all know how bad the advertising on Facebook can be, there's adverts all over the sidebar and even in your newsfeed. Sidebar ads and sponsored pages & posts are the two most common types.

Adblock Plus blocks the 7 most common types of adverts on Facebook as soon as you activate it but there's other kinds of posts you may not want to see as well.

The 7 Standard Ad-Types on Facebook

The red overlay shows just how much advertizing there is on your average Facebook page.

1. Ads in the right sidebar
2. Pages you may like
3. Sponsored results
4. Sponsored pages your friends like
5. Sponsored related posts of pages your friends like
6. Sponsored suggested posts not even your friends or you liked
7. Logout ads

The Logout Ads are giant full width images. They occupy almost the whole area above the fold.

The cool thing about the default settings is that they remove anything that is tagged as 'sponsored'.

Other Kinds of Adverts to Block on Facebook

Anything tagged as 'sponsored' is definitely an advert but there's some items that strictly speaking aren't adverts. Games your friends are playing or trending videos are two that come to mind that actually have a use for some people. While they are useful for some they are quite annoying for everyone else. Some people just don't play Facebook games and showing them games their friends play is pointless. Because of that fact the community of users at Adblock Plus have been working together to create filters to block anything that might be considered an annoyance to some people

1. People you may know
2. Games you may like
3. Games your friends are playing
4. Recommended pages

Those 4 content types have a use but most of the time you're going to ignore them. There's another 6 blocks that you may also want to get rid of.

• Trending videos
• Most Shared
• Upcoming Concerts
• Recently Released Albums
• Page X is posting about Page Y

Removing all of those is done by adding a single filter line, read the full instructions to see how to do it but it shouldn't take you any longer than 60 seconds to block all of these ad blocks.

In Conclusion

Facebook has extraordinary diversity when it comes to displaying advertizing. Most of those get blocked by the default filters of Adblock Plus - you never have to worry about seeing them again. For the other kinds of ad blocks you need to add a line to your filters list - these are optional because some of the additional ad types are useful for certain people.

On Youtube adverts before and between videos are simply gone, you won't see them anymore. You won't see overlay adverts or the advert in the sidebar.

Blocking Facebook adverts has allowed William to find the pictures of cute cats his friends share quicker than ever before. But in seriousness getting rid of all that clutter really improves the overall Facebook experience.