Neil Smyth

Ad Blocking Survival Guide Neil Smyth

Over 200 million people now use an ad blocker when browsing the internet, a 41% increase over the preceding 12 month period. This widespread use of ad blocking technology is expected to result in over $20 billion in lost advertising revenue this year alone.

Despite the magnitude of these numbers, the threat of ad blocking is largely an invisible threat to the average web publisher. Unless steps are taken to assess the impact of ad blocking on an individual website, the only sign that ad blocking is an issue is likely to be a decline in advertising revenue.

Ad blocking is certainly far from the only challenge faced by web publishers today. The good news, however, is that ad blocking is one of the few areas where web publishers have some control over how to respond to the issue. We can't cure ad blindness, stop ad budgets migrating to Facebook, and whatever is causing revenues from Google AdSense advertising to decline is far beyond our control. What we do control is our own websites and, by extension, how we react to, communicate with and respond to visitors using ad blocking is entirely up to us.

While there is no "one size fits all" solution, the goal of this book is to outline a range of proven strategies designed to not only detect, quantify and mitigate the threat of ad blocking, but also move beyond advertising as a sole source of revenue.

The chapters in this book cover a variety of options, including code examples, ranging from passive measuring of ad blocking behavior to the more aggressive step of denying access to visitors using an ad blocker. Topics covered in this book include: Learn how ad blocking works Detect when visitors are blocking ads Assess ad blocking impact on your site Use ad reinsertion to fill blocked ads Generate revenue beyond advertising Persuade visitors to whitelist your website Learn how to deny site access to ad blockers Track visitor whitelist compliance rates Generate revenue with native advertising Learn about the Acceptable Ads Initiative Explore 3rd party solutions