Ad Blockers For The Real World? They’re Here (Sort of)

If you thought ad blocking was confined to screens, think again. Belgian developer Stijn Spanhove has built a prototype for Snap’s Spectacles AR glasses that literally blocks ads in the real world.

Here’s how it works:

• Spectacles’ cameras capture your field of view.

• Google Gemini detects ads (billboards, signage, product logos).

• The app overlays a big fat block where the ad was.

In other words: you walk past a McDonald’s poster and instead see a giant red rectangle (or, if you like, a cat picture). The software is early-stage. Snap Spectacles remain developer-only, so this isn’t mainstream yet.

But conceptually? It’s wild. We’re talking about extending ad blocking from pixels to physical space.

Why It Could Be a Thing

• Tech companies want AR everywhere
  Meta, Apple, Snap — all betting billions on AR as the next interface. A consumer-friendly utility like this could help justify those devices beyond novelty filters.

• Consumers hate visual clutter
  We’ve normalized blocking ads online. Why wouldn’t people want that same power IRL? Ads in cities are overwhelming — the appetite to remove them could be there.

• Personalisation angle
  Why stop at “blocks”? Replace ads with art, news, or something calming. A curated physical feed could appeal to the same instincts that made ad blockers mainstream.

Why It (Probably) Won’t Scale

• Hardware is the bottleneck
  AR glasses are heavy, awkward, and niche. Until they’re as common as sunglasses, this stays experimental.

• Performance & accuracy
  Detecting every ad in real time? That’s GPU-heavy. Current AR hardware barely handles filters without lag. However, that’ll change.

• Do people really care that much?
  Whereas ads are everywhere online, they aren’t so much in real life — unless you live in Times Square (where ads are a feature, not a bug). Even if AR glasses go mainstream, this feels like the biggest stumbling block.

Adblock Analyst View

This is novel. The question isn’t whether it works (it does, sort of) — the question is: will this ever be a thing?

On one hand, this feels inevitable. The same forces that made ad blockers ubiquitous on desktop — user control, cleaner experiences, backlash against ad overload — exist offline. Combine that with Big Tech’s AR obsession, and you can imagine a future where reality is as customizable as a Chrome tab.

On the other hand, adoption barriers are steep. For most people, buying AR glasses just to hide a billboard is absurd. For this to work, AR glasses need to solve other problems — and then ad blocking becomes a feature, not the product. And even as a feature, how desirable is it really? If you only see a handful of ads a day, is it worth the effort?

It’s a tug-of-war between desire (we hate ads) and delivery (hardware sucks). If AR devices cross the mainstream chasm, real-world ad blocking could be a natural layer. Until then, it’s a clever demo — and a fascinating glimpse at how far the ad blocking instinct might reach.

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