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Adblockers stop publishers serving ads to (or even seeing) 1bn web users - Press Gazette (pressgazette.co.uk)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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They call it "dark traffic" - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.

Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.

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[-] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

“The growth of dark traffic undermines the ability of publishers to fund the production of quality content, or even operate as a business. We must recognise users are not the main driver causing this.”

And Scott Messer, founder of publishing adtech consultancy Messer Media, added: “Dark traffic is unlike anything we have seen before. It’s demonetising publisher content at scale without user consent.

Are they trying to present it as if poor innocent users need to be protected from the vile ad blockers?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Definitely. They are likely laying the groundwork to make using an adblocker a criminal offense.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

They always care about us when they are losing money arent they...

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Bold of them to claim they produce quality content. Such businesses should die right along with their advertisers.

this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025

1198 points (100.0% liked)

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