The report, which was compiled by Adobe and PageFair, estimated that ad-blocking grew by 41 percent globally in the last 12 months and there are now 198 million active users worldwide who are blocking ads. But a new report suggests an explosion in the use of ad-blocking software is on course to cost publishers $22 billion in revenue by the end of the year.

According to the report, ad blockers have caused a loss of $21.8bn (£14bn) in ad revenues in 2015.

The numbers were calculated using PageFair’s ad blocker tracking software used on over 3,000 websites, with the company estimating that up to 27 per cent of ad inventory is lost due to the use of programmes, such as Eyeo’s Adblock Plus.

The writers of the report conclude that ad blocking has resulted from “intrusive, annoying, irrelevant or downright creepy” ads, and that users must be treated with respect if they are expected to tolerate advertising they can turn off with a click.

In Europe, ad blocking grew by 35 per cent during the same period to 77 million monthly active users.

Blocking ads is largely concentrated in specific demographics.

“By working with PageFair, our goal with this research is to shed light on the effects of ad blocking so the industry can develop better solutions for content publishers, advertisers and consumers alike”, said Campbell Foster, a director of product marketing at Adobe.

Sean Blanchfield, PageFair’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “It is tragic that ad block users are inadvertently inflicting multi-billion dollar losses on the very websites they most enjoy“. PageFair said it has tracked the growth of ad blocking for three years and now measures more than 1 billion ad-blockign hits every month across 3,000-plus client Web sites to help determine the types of content that is most affected by the practice.

“With ad blocking going mobile, there’s an eminent threat that the business model that has supported the open web for two decades is going to collapse”, he said. At the moment, the majority of users employ ad blocking on their computers, since most plugins are not yet available for browsers on mobile devices.