With 912 million ad-blocking users, marketers are up against a big challenge: fewer people are reachable through traditional ad-based tracking. The push for fewer ads isn’t new, but this recent growth in ad blocking comes at the heels of a growing call for user control and privacy in digital spaces.
There’s a lot of pressure on the online advertising space right now. And that pressure is forcing the industry to make big changes to address data privacy concerns and consumers' dislike for ads in a sustainable way.
While there are some band-aid solutions for marketers to circumvent ad-blocking software, ultimately, marketers will need to adopt new strategies to embrace a privacy-centric world.
Let’s dive into how ad blocking has reshaped the marketing landscape in recent years, how the industry responded and the best way to proceed with targeting and measurement.
What is ad blocking, and why do people use it?
Ad-blocking technology involves using software or browser extensions to prevent ads, such as banners, pop-ups and auto-playing video ads, from appearing. Ad blocker software gives individuals a cleaner, less cluttered browsing experience, and web pages load faster, sometimes twice as fast.
A 2024 report found that 63.2% of internet users use ad blockers because they think ads are excessive, 53.4% said they get in the way and 40.3% are also motivated by data privacy concerns.
There are varying reasons behind ad blocker usage.
Source: Ad Blocker Usage and Demographic Statistics
Ad blockers address privacy concerns by keeping advertising technology from gathering personal data, giving internet users more control over who sees their online behavior.
How does ad blocking work?
Think of ad blocking like a teacher who makes a kindergarten classroom safe for students by ensuring the room is free of dangerous items. Similarly, content blocking filters out nonessential noise, leaving people with a more desirable experience on publisher websites.
Ad blockers work by filtering out ads through three main methods: predefined lists, content blocking and custom rules. These methods identify websites or pieces of code that signal an ad's presence and block them before they load.
- Predefined lists: These lists consist of ad-serving domains and formats that check page content. If a match is found, the ad is blocked before it’s displayed.
- Content blocking: These tools use scripts to prevent specific page elements from loading based on tags or JavaScript identifiers that flag whether something is an ad.
- Custom rules: Some ad blockers allow users to decide which ads or scripts to block. For instance, users could block Google AdSense ads but keep Outbrain content.
Say you’re browsing an online store, but constant pop-ups and banner ads slow your shopping experience. You install an ad blocker — popular ad-blocking extensions include AdBlock Plus, uBlock Origin and Ghostery.
Here’s what might happen to stop any unwanted ad content from appearing:
First, predefined lists block known ad servers like DoubleClick or Teads, which means any banners or pop-ups from these networks won’t load. Content blocking looks for page elements that resemble ads, like auto-play videos tagged with certain JavaScript markers, to stop them from playing. You can also configure custom rules to block Google AdSense ads to make sure only the content you want to see loads.
4 ways ad blocking affects advertisers
This trend toward ad blocking spells significant losses for websites that rely on advertising revenue. Ad blockers will cost about $54 billion in lost ad revenue in 2024.
The impact of ad blockers on the advertising industry is massive.
Not only will that spend not be realized, but blocking and its effects will disrupt campaign measurement and make targeting less effective.
1. Wasted spend
Some ad platforms will charge you for an ad when it's served. Others, like Google, still charge for blocked impressions. Blocked video views don’t incur a cost, but blocked impressions for display ads do, adding up to a substantial waste of marketing budget for never-seen ads.
2. Data loss and incomplete tracking
Ad blockers prevent the loading of key scripts, like tracking pixels and analytics tags, that marketers rely on to gather data. This loss of data results in incomplete customer profiles and makes it hard to understand their behavior. When you don’t understand how your target audience interacts with your ads, making informed decisions about which activities are worthwhile is hard.
3. Attribution challenges
Attribution modeling becomes difficult when you don’t have enough data. Actions like clicking a link or making a purchase aren’t tracked if someone has an ad blocker turned on, which leaves marketers at a loss to connect these actions back to specific ads.
4. Impact on retargeting efforts
Retargeting depends on the cookies and tracking scripts that ad blocker users prevent marketers from collecting. This makes retargeting less effective because marketers waste ad spend on people who can’t be re-engaged due to missing tracking data.
8 solutions for advertisers to get around ad blockers
Without ways to work around them, ad blockers will continue diminishing the returns of what businesses spend on ads. There are ways to get around them, but doing it in a way that respects privacy is a balancing act.
Most people use ad blockers because they want control over their experience and a break from being tracked, so any workaround must be handled carefully. You risk losing your audience’s trust if you use tactics that don’t respect their wishes.
With the right approach, it’s possible to reach the people who actually want to hear from you without compromising that trust. Here are eight solutions worth considering for getting around the negative effects of ad blocking.
Some solutions respect consumer preferences around ads. However, none are perfect.
1. Pre-bid blocking
Pre-bid blocking helps you sidestep wasted ad dollars by filtering out users with ad blockers turned on before the ad auction. Say you notice a drop in conversions from a news site and suspect it’s because many people have ad blockers turned on. You could implement pre-bid blocking on that site to make sure only ad-eligible people see your ads.
2. Native advertising
Native ads are designed to blend into the surrounding content, which makes them harder for ad blockers to spot. If your banner ads struggle to get clicks, shifting to native ads can boost click-through rates because they feel more like part of the user experience.
3. Ad blocker detection scripts
Ad blocker detection scripts identify when a user has an ad blocker turned on. Then, it asks that person to turn the ad blocker off, sometimes by offering alternative access options.
For example, if a site finds 40% of its visitors have ad blockers on, it might give its audience the option to turn off ad blockers in exchange for access to gated content. Working with sites that use these scripts can lead to higher click-through rates.
4. Server-side ad insertion (SSAI)
SSAI embeds ads directly into a video stream, bypassing any ad-blocking technology on the user’s device. For example, a sports site expecting millions of views for a major event might use SSAI to embed ads right into the live stream if it notices an impact on ad revenue from ad blockers.
This way, all viewers see the ads, no matter what ad blockers they use. You could work with sites that take this approach to ensure you reach your audience, but this tactic may erode trust in your brand when your audience realizes you’ve found a way around their wishes.
5. Ad-light experiences or subscriptions
Some sites offer an ad-light experience in exchange for paying a fee as part of their subscription model. This can improve engagement for advertisers by reducing ad fatigue. Your target audience won’t feel duped by this tactic since they consciously choose the experience they prefer.
6. Allowlist options
Allowlist programs like Acceptable Ads allow certain non-intrusive ads to bypass blockers. A new app, for example, might rely on ads for downloads but knows ad blockers cut into that visibility. Partnering with a program like Acceptable Ads lets the app show ads that individuals and ad blockers deem non-intrusive.
7. Incentivized ads
Incentivized ads reward users for choosing to watch them. For example, rewarded video ads in mobile games give in-game incentives in exchange for ad views. You may feel more confident in engagement metrics if you know people willingly watch ads because they get something in return.
8. First-party data
First-party data lets you target users without relying on third-party trackers, which ad blockers love to block. If you’ve been using third-party data and suspect lower performance is because of ad blockers, switch strategies to gather data from places like sign-ups and purchases directly.
While other options can help circumvent ad blockers, first-party data changes the game. It doesn’t just avoid ad blockers. It’s a privacy-friendly way to create campaigns that respect your audience’s data preferences and is a long-term solution for effective marketing that builds real trust.
The future of advertising is privacy-centric marketing
Ad blockers’ continued popularity indicates that people want more control over their data. Privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA were introduced in response to growing concerns about data privacy, pushing companies to prioritize user rights and data protection. This shift has forced the industry to start phasing out third-party cookies.
Marketers will now rely on first-party data and zero-party data collected transparently and in compliance with privacy regulations. Consumers will share this data willingly through surveys, purchases, digital content interactions or website visits, including those using ad blockers.
Of course, first- and zero-party data alone won’t replace third-party data entirely. In the future, performance marketers will fill the gaps with probabilistic data, which comes from patterns in big datasets, to make predictions.
Triangulation is one way to combat ad blockers
Ad blocking in online advertising cuts valuable advertising data off at the source. Marketing measurement triangulation is the smartest way to combat that loss when measuring your ad campaigns.
By using multi-touch attribution (MTA) to inform your marketing mix modeling (MMM), and then using incrementality testing to refine your models, triangulation compensates for the gaps in data and still delivers a well-rounded view of campaign effectiveness.
Triangulation allows for better precision when measuring performance.
Measurement methods like MTA focus on individual consumer journeys to determine which digital touchpoints (like ads or email) lead to conversions. This method has never been perfect for measuring marketing holistically, and it will become even less accurate without enough user-level data.
Marketing mix modeling analyzes the overall impact of all digital and offline marketing activities on sales. Rather than focusing on clicks, MMM uses data like total media spend and sales performance to decide which channels drive results. It’s a more straightforward solution for analyzing cross-channel campaigns, especially those that include offline media, and it’s the core of the future of marketing measurement.
Then, there’s incrementality testing, which helps determine the true lift from a campaign by running controlled experiments. It compares groups exposed to a campaign to those that aren’t to decide how much of a sales increase can actually be attributed to your ads, separate from what would’ve happened anyway.
Together, they become triangulation, creating a unified data ecosystem based on insights from a wide range of sources like CRM platforms, ad channels and offline data. It lets marketers see their impact across the board, so if one stream (say, direct digital tracking) is affected by ad blockers, other sources can still help tell the story.
Get started with measurement triangulation
People want more control over their online experiences and data, and ad blockers are just one way to achieve this. While it’s easy to see this as an advertising problem, it’s also a chance to earn the trust of your consumers by putting their comfort first. Brands that respect privacy by showing customers they’re listening will have a better chance of building genuine loyalty.
Plus, a privacy-first mindset doesn’t necessarily mean ineffective marketing. Solutions like triangulation, which combine methods like MTA, MMM and incrementality testing, allow marketers to gain valuable insights without tracking every user action. These tools may feel unfamiliar or even complex at first, but they’re built to help brands understand what’s working while respecting privacy and the customer experience.
A respectful, privacy-conscious approach isn’t just a good look; it’s a strategic win. When brands create marketing that feels safe and respectful, customers notice.
Download the Triangulation Tango report to see how your team can stay insightful and impactful without sacrificing trust.