If you’re a publisher I have good news for you (and not so good).

The good news is you have more traffic than you realize. The not so good news is it’s severely under monetized. This traffic is lapping up your content for free.

What am I talking about? Dark traffic. Yes, dark traffic.

Though it may sound sinister, dark traffic is made up of normal-people (not bots) accessing your website. You do not know about them because their activity is not recorded by your existing analytics. They’re invisible to you. Off-grid. But, they’re very much there.

What exactly is dark traffic?

When we started Ad-Shield, one of the first insights we gleaned was that the majority of adblocking traffic (70%+) is of a fundamentally different nature than what most people realize (in a bad way). We call this category of adblocking traffic brutal adblocking because of the extreme degree it goes to block tracking.

We therefore view the adblocking ecosystem in two distinct segments:

1. Soft adblockers
2. Brutal adblockers.

Soft adblockers like AdBlock and Adblock Plus kicked-off the adblocking movement. They’re the OGs. Those that followed like uBlock Origin, AdGuard, and Brave have taken adblocking to a new brutal era.

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Unlike soft adblockers, brutal adblockers prevent both industry-standard analytics (e.g. Google Analytics) and adblocking-specific solutions (e.g. the IAB’s detection script) from tracking and measuring their users.

When I inform publishers about this, they usually point out that they currently use an adblocking analytics service provided by a third-party vendor. This gives them “visibility” into their adblocking audience size.

Unfortunately, these solutions are not super accurate. They’re pretty good at measuring soft adblocker traffic, but not so much brutal adblocker traffic.

Now, I’m not going to beat around the bush here because this is important. Without naming names (you know who they are 😉), I will tell you why the two most popular adblocking analytics fall short.

One of the vendors — who primarily offers a programmatic Acceptable Ads product — was acquired by a German company that owns two well-known adblockers in 2022. Here’s the crux: their analytics tends to be efficient at measuring traffic from their own adblockers, but less efficient at measuring traffic from other adblockers (funny, heh?). This is a significant problem in that their owned and operated adblocker traffic makes up just 20-35% of the total out there

The other vendor — which is primarily known for its adblock wall — has limited ability to track dark traffic due to the inherent nature of its product. First of all, an adblock wall turns adblocking traffic away (artificially suppressing it). Secondly, adblock walls get blocked by brutal adblockers. If it’s getting blocked, it isn’t getting recorded and measured.

What this all means is that publishers are not seeing or measuring a big chunk of their adblocking traffic at all. It’s dark.

To quantify the scale of the problem, the ratio of dark traffic has grown significantly in recent years. Brutal adblockers now make up around 70% of total adbocking traffic.

It’s exploded in the last few years.

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What are the implications of dark traffic?

Dark traffic is not just unmeasured, it’s also unmonetized.

Brutal adblockers do not just block analytics. They block adblock walls. And, they do not run Acceptable Ads.

This is killer. These are the two primary mechanisms that publishers utilize to monetize their adblocking audience. Both have been made defunct, just like that.

However, there is something you can do about this.

Yes, it is possible to measure and monetize dark traffic — so that it’s dark no more. But, you guessed it, you’re going to need Ad-Shield. 😉

Why should you listen to us?

Let’s call out the elephant in the room. Why should you trust what we have to say?

First of all, we are approaching the adblocking problem with fresh thinking (at last). We’re the only serious new vendor to enter the adblocking solution space in a long, long time. And, we did that because we could see things weren’t working. The adblocking problem isn’t ‘solved’.

The various members of our team come from a range of backgrounds, including building an adblocker, using adblockers, fighting with hackers at anti-virus companies, and being open web evangelists. In other words, a publisher and consumer perspective is present in the room when we choose to build stuff.

Secondly, we do not have any legacy interests to protect and prop up. You know, like owning a major adblocker or a legacy solution with technical debt. Therefore, we’re able to approach the situation more objectively and better intentioned.

We have developed brand new tech from the ground up. Tech that’s fit for the brutal adblocking era (yep… it both measures and monetizes dark traffic). When we demo’d it, we were able to raise $2m. Prominent adtech industry veterans also got onboard, like Scott Messer.

Since then, we’ve put it to good use helping publishers measure and monetize their dark traffic.

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How to measure your dark traffic

You can measure your dark traffic with Ad-Shield. We can provide this insight without the need to sign a contract or commit to anything.

And, we made it real easy to do. By the time you’ve had a cup of coffee, you can get it setup.

The steps are:

1. Fill out and submit this publisher application form.
2. Once approved, insert our detection script into your website’s <head>
3. Measure in real-time. Your dashboard will report all of your adblocking traffic (which includes dark traffic)

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To get started measuring your dark traffic, click here.

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