Before, we were in the soft adblocking era. Today, we are in the brutal adblocking era.

The difference? Brutal adblockers aren’t just regular old adblockers, they’re revenue blockers.

These radical tools block cookie banners and adblock walls (hard or soft), and they don’t run Acceptable Ads. In other words: they eliminate the primary methods publishers have utilized to monetize adblocking audiences since 2018. Poof. Gone. Just like that.

It doesn’t stop there. By blocking Google Analytics and standard adblocking analytics solutions by default, brutal adblockers are also invisible to publishers. People that use them are a hidden audience — dark traffic — that shockingly accounts for 70%+ of total adblocked page views out there. A specialised solution is required to measure them.

But, who exactly are the brutal adblockers? Who is revenue blocking billions of dollars from cash-strapped publishers? Who is the enemy threatening livelihoods?

Let’s name names. But, first, a little context.

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Soft adblockers

You may be familiar with the name ‘eyeo’ — a German company that owns the popular adblockers ‘AdBlock’ and ‘Adblock Plus’. Both of these adblockers hit the limelight in 2015-16 when adblocking became an industry crisis. At that time, these extensions generated 80%+ of adblocked page views online.

However, circumstances have radically changed over the last few years. AdBlock and Adblock Plus now generate 25-30% of adblocked page views. Their market share has totally collapsed.

They’re also not brutal adblockers. They’re what we call ‘soft adblockers’. Why? They give publishers a little breathing room to make a little money.

By default, they permit advertising and third-party cookie tracking through Acceptable Ads, and they allow adblock walls, cookie banners, and on-site analytics.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re very much an enemy to publishers and consumers in that they undermine the economic viability of publishers to exist and continue producing content (a conversation for a different day 😅 ), but they’re not brutal adblockers.

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Brutal adblockers

By comparison, brutal adblockers don’t give publishers any slack whatsoever. Not even a dime. They have more of what you might call a ‘scorched earth policy’. That means ruthlessly enforcing ad-free, tracking-free, and cookie banner-free page loading in their hardline pursuit of pristine web browsing — even if the outcome of that means content-free because the publisher can no longer afford to produce it.

Collectively, they have replaced soft adblockers as the dominant adblocking software used globally. So, who are they?

There are three categories of brutal adblockers. Let’s quickly run through each and call out notable players.

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Extension & App Blocking

This first category is an evolutionary next step of what came before. Primarily, it’s consumer-oriented in the form of browser extensions (e.g. for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari) and operating system (OS) applications (e.g. for iOS, MacOS, Android, Windows).

Big names include uBlock Origin, AdGuard, Ghostery, 1Blocker, AdBlocker Ultimate, Adblock Fast, AdLock, Wipr, and AdClear. There’s a long-tail of hundreds more.

Some only operate on just one or a handful of browsers and OS’s (e.g. 1Blocker only works on iOS with Safari), whereas other vendors field products for all browsers and OS’s (e.g. AdGuard).

Common traits between them: ‘out of the box’ they do not allow ads (including Acceptable Ads), adblock walls, or cookie-banners to load on the page.

For context, uBlock Origin and AdGuard (alone) have had 170m+ downloads and users between them. We estimate the total usage for all providers in this category is 320m+.

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Bundled Blocking

This second category appeals to both consumer and business use cases. We refer to it as ‘bundled blocking’ because adblocking is not the primary value proposition, but instead part of an overall value proposition in which it intuitively aligns.

This category can be split down further, into two subcategories:

1. VPNs. Virtual Private Networks that also facilitate adblocking
2. Browsers. Privacy-first browsers that have adblocking natively built-in

VPNs are used in both consumer and business use cases, whereas privacy-first browsers are mostly used in consumer use cases.

According to Surfshark, there are 1.6 billion VPN users globally. Many now include ad, tracking, and cookie banner blocking as part of their service. This functionality may be active by default, enabled manually, or available as a paid upgrade. The leading providers offering this include NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, TotalVPN, CyberGhost, Proton VPN, TorGuard, Hide.me, AdGuard VPN, and Mullvad.

Comparatively, big name privacy-first browsers include Brave, Ghostery Browser, DuckDuckGo Provacy Browser, and LibreWolf. They have ad, tracker, and cookie-banner blocking built-in and active by default. None run Acceptable Ads.

For context, Brave alone claims 68.2m monthly active users as of August 2024. We estimate the total usage for bundled adblockers is 250m+.

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Network-Level Blocking

This third category’s primary use case is business and government, though it is starting to gain traction in consumer contexts.

How it works: ads are blocked at a network-level (as opposed to a device-level). Any device that connects to the network automatically blocks ads, tracking, and cookie banners across all browsers and apps running on it (depending on how it is configured). You guessed it: no Acceptable Ads either. Example networks: public wi-fi spots and workplaces.

Network-level adblocking is becoming increasingly prevalent within companies (big and small), government departments, hospitals, universities, schools, and public places. Sometimes it’s setup in-house, other times it’s installed or provided by a third-party vendor.

High profile names: the NSA, CIA, and the IC (Intelligence Community), which includes parts of the FBI, DEA, and DHS, have installed network-level adblocking. The FBI went so far as to recommend it publicly. It’s becoming a ‘best practice’ for mitigating cyber-security threats in the private sector.

In consumer use cases, Pi-hole, AdGuard DNS, and NextDNS are big name providers. NextDNS is also used in business use cases (Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, and Mozilla are partners).

To give an idea of scale, we estimate network-level adblocking is the largest category of brutal adblocking by total number of end-users (350m+).

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The sum total

Collectively, we estimate there are 700m+ brutal adblocker end-users globally. The scary part? For most publishers, this traffic is invisible. Google Analytics and ‘off the shelf’ (non-bleeding edge) adblocking analytics doesn’t capture it.

When we became aware of the size of the problem, we had to develop specific technology to comprehensively measure it. Once installed with our publishing partners, this revealed an adblocking audience 2-3X larger than they previously knew about (sometimes more!)

To get started measuring your brutal adblocking traffic, head here.