It has become obvious that adblocking has entered a new era. An era where submitting to the terms of the adblockers is no longer tenable because the terms have fundamentally changed.

At Ad-Shield, we have officially declared this the brutal adblocker era.

Things have moved on profoundly since the ‘Adblockalypse’ news cycle of 2015-16 and the anti-climatic years that followed. A period where the adoption of adblocking software appeared to plateau at pre-existential crisis levels. A period where anger towards adblockers waned and the industry yielded to the dominant adblocking company’s desire to re-insert ads in return for a handsome fee. Yes, I am referring to eyeo and Acceptable Ads.

Today’s adblocking users are no longer as receptive to that arrangement. They are using non-eyeo owned adblockers that do not participate in Acceptable Ads.

In fact, it’s not just Acceptable Ads that’s been disregarded by brutal adblockers. They also block CMP messages, first-party data collection, internal promotion (e.g. newsletter sign ups), plea walls, and even on-site tracking (e.g. Google Analytics).

In other words, brutal adblockers remove the auxiliary controls that many publishers have utilized to help mitigate the financial effects of adblocking. These aren’t just adblockers, they’re revenue blockers. They’re brutal.

Brutal adblockers now generate the majority of adblocked page views online. Before, the eyeo-owned browser extensions AdBlock and Adblock Plus used to generate 80%+ of adblocked page views. In recent years, their market share has nose-dived and they now control a minority share (we estimate around 20-35%).

On average, we see brutal adblockers comprising 55% to 65% of a publisher’s total adblocked page views. The highest we've seen is 85%.

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Who are the brutal ad blockers?

Adblocking is no longer mainly a browser extension phenomenon. It increasingly occurs through built-in browsers, dedicated-device applications, VPNs, and at the network-level.

Brave, AdGuard, and uBlock Origin are the leading brutal adblockers at the in-built browser, browser extension, and dedicated-device application level. They’re supported by a long-tail of smaller vendors (such as AdBlocker Ultimate, AdLock, and 1Blocker).

VPNs also now commonly offer brutal adblocking as an option. This includes leading providers such as NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN, TorGuard, Hide.me, and Mullvad.

In addition to this, network-level adblocking is also progressively being implemented within companies, government departments, universities, and public Wi-Fi providers. Any device connecting to such a network will automatically block ads (whether the device connects in the office or remotely). For example, the FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA, and DHS have all installed network-level adblocking.

Collectively, the global user base of brutal adblocking software is comfortably into the hundreds of millions. We have not yet publicly declared a specific estimated figure, but we know it’s this kind of scale through the integrations we have running with our publisher partners.

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What can publishers do?

Worryingly, brutal adblocking traffic is invisible to many publishers. Most ‘off the shelf’ adblocking analytics (non-bleeding-edge) are unable to track it accurately, if at all. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. It’s dark traffic.

Adblocking is not the only monetization problem that publisher’s face, but it is the most significant relative to how little-attention it gets. It wipes out 20-45% of a publisher’s ad revenue — comparable to the ‘adtech tax’ of the entire programmatic supply chain.

This has real world consequences. Publishers have their backs to the walls in today’s monetization environment. Yielding to the terms of adblockers is no longer tenable. It’s time to forge a pathway directly with users.

Therefore, in the brutal adblocking era control is king.

Publishers that are able to directly control the terms of their advertising experience — while preserving their readers’ essential preferences and trust — will come out on top.

In practice, that means thoughtfully re-introducing ads to readers using brutal adblockers. Ads they find allowable.

That may sound contradictory, but it’s not. Though brutal adblockers are extreme in the degree of what they block on a website, their users are not fanatical.

Most are regular people — like students, doctors, or soccer moms — who are either using a brutal adblocker by default (e.g. it runs on their employer’s network) or simply because they can (spoiler: most people would rather not see ads if that’s an option).

While there are categories of ads that many of these users find unallowable (like pre-roll, autoplay videos, and floating ads) there are categories of ads they find allowable and are willing to permit as part of their content consumption experience. Roughly speaking, allowable ad formats match closely to the Better Ads Standard.

This distinction is huge. Unallowable ads are disrespectful to users’ essential preferences and degrade relationships with publishers. Blocking them is a must.

Allowable ads meet users’ essential preferences and builds relationships with publishers. Blocking them is a bonus, not a must.

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Our approach is to focus only on re-introducing allowable ads. This way we can be pro-user, by serving ads that don’t conflict with their content consumption experience while also compensating the publisher; so they can continue to fund the production of more content.

Is there a teeny bit of tension here? Sure. Just like there’s a teeny bit of tension when you’re buying a coffee and have to tap your card on the card machine. Getting the coffee for free would be ideal, but you’re also happy to pay if that’s what it takes — so long as the cost is palatable.

Having said that, we rarely see evidence of such tension. We have large publishers as customers (with millions of monthly uniques) that have gone live with our solution and have received zero complaints from their loyal reader bases.

For the extreme minority of brutal adblocker users that do not want to see any ads at all, it's straightforward to provide the option for them opt out. This neuters any perceived grievance.

What we’ve developed is a fair and agreeable value exchange between publishers and readers. The proof is in the results.

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