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The Publishers Response To
Ad Blocking
Jeff Burkett
@burk504

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What’s a Pub to do?
• Are you to blame?
• % of audience blocking ads?
• Sell Thru High?
• Opportunity cost vs Recovered Value

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Opportunity Cost vs Recoverable Value
• Opportunity Cost
– Ad Blocked PV’s * RPM
• All Value Cannot be Recovered
– Programmatic will be less valuable due to low amount of cookie data in
browser
• Blockers block 3rd party tracking on Retail sites, etc
– You might not recover all ads.
• pre-roll
• Interstitials

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4 Paths to Consider

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1. Pay the Ransom?
• Pay % of ads unblocked
• Only unblocks ads they
deem acceptable
• Text
• Simple Image

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2. Subscribe to enter
Could
this
possibly
convert?

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3. Disable Ad-Blocker to Enter
42% Conversion rate at
Forbes!

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The Nuclear Option

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4. Ad Recovery
Restoring ads despite visitor having installed an ad blocker
Fireside Chat with Jason Kint and the FTC

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‘When the consumer has made
a clear choice, that choice
should be honored and if you do
circumvent that choice it needs
to be communicated clearly and
in a non-deceptive manner’
Julie Brill – FTC Commissioner

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How Ads are Blocked
and the Ways Around It
#IAmNotAnEngineer

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We are Outnumbered – EasyList

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1st Battle - HTTP Blocking
• Browser plug-ins have access to HTTP traffic as it comes in and
out of the browser.
• Blockers sniff HTTP traffic for domains and block per EasyList

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Getting Past HTTP Blocking
• Recovery solutions find ways to 'Hide' the ad traffic
– domain switching/encryption via CDN
– Diverting Ad traffic to a different Protocol from HTTP (like UDP)
• Rich Media is much harder than a .jpg or .gif
• Analytics is the tricky bit

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2nd Battle - Element Hiding
• If ad traffic is able to get past blockers then they will start to make
changes in the browser to hide the ad.
– Collapsing Div’s
– Covering ads with white boxes
• Recovery Solution must
– Confuse the blocker to be unable to hide/cover ads
– Have a method to reverse anything that the blocker does

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Takeaways
• Start by determining the damage being done
– Resources might be better spent elsewhere
• Choose the right path based on your goals
– Ad $
– Audience growth and Engagement
• Pubs are in this together
– The more who battle this, the more successful we will be
– Share ideas…connect our dev teams…keep talking to vendors

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Thank You
@burk504
jeff.burkett@washpost.com