Ad Blocking and What You Can Do About It

[djbaxter]

Ad Blocking is Becoming a Real Threat: Here's What Publishers Can Do About It
by Greg Brown, HubSpot
September 24, 2015

The way ad blocking technology works (at least for now) is, using a list of advertiser IP addresses, it detects content coming from one of those IP addresses and then summarily rejects that content or “strips” it from the web page, usually filling the space with other content so the reader’s viewing isn’t full of holes where advertisements had been.

At the moment, ad blockers generally deal with the most “annoying” types of ads, such as pop-ups, pre-roll video ads, or retargeted ads. It's easy to see why this technology would have mass appeal to mobile users, constantly battling slow networks on tiny screens.

Ad blockers, while a hot topic right now, are hardly new. Several popular browsers—Chrome and Firefox for example—have supported third-party plugins on desktops for years. But while these plugins have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times by users, ad blocking features were never built directly into browsers, nor were they available on the mobile web.

The data behind this technology shows it hasn't been widely adopted just yet, but still remains a looming thread. According to eMarketer, a conservative estimate of 10-15% of internet users in the US are “actively blocking digital ads,” skewed toward younger demographics. This may not be a crippling number at present, but substantial enough to warrant the attention of those reliant on banner ads for part of their revenue. The shift will only grow more troublesome as users become more savvy about their options, and developers continue to release built-in or third party ad blocking technologies.

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