I was asked to test the redesigned web page of a large bank. They had eye tracking cameras and such hooked up to study how I used the web page.
They ran through some scenarios, and one was how to get a car loan. I studied the homepage and found nothing, then clicked the menu and found loans, but no car loan on the loans page. I ended up searching and found it.
After each scenario they asked me some questions, and the first question I got for the car loan scenario was why I hadn't clicked on the link on the front page. There was no link, I replied puzzled. There was a large image they said. I stared in disbelief.
The person running the scripts navigated to the homepage, and pointed at the screen. There, at the bottom, a blinking banner about car loans.
I replied that it must have triggered my mental ad blocker, since ads are typically banners, frequently near the edges and animated somehow, so I never even registered the banner.
They looked genuinely puzzled at my response.
This was 25 years ago. My mental ad blocker is still active, though uBlock Origin on Firefox takes care of most of them.
For me physical ad blocking is more about a first-line defense against malware and such than it is about getting rid of obnoxious ads. The latter my mental blocker does fine enough, though it can be annoying.