The IAB's Seven Tactics for Publishers Dealing With Ad Blockers
On March 7, 2016, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its Publisher Ad-Blocking Primer — a 23-page document laying out seven tactics publishers can use to combat the growing ad-blocker problem.
The primer also introduces a process called DEAL, which the IAB recommends publishers follow when engaging visitors who are running an ad blocker:
The DEAL process and the Publisher Ad-Blocking Primer sit alongside several other recent initiatives from the IAB Tech Lab aimed at addressing ad blocking. These include an ad-blocking detection script and the LEAN Ads Program, which is designed to ensure ads complement — and ideally enhance — the user experience rather than degrade it:
7 Tactics Publishers Can Use to Deal With Ad Blockers
The tactics in the primer cover a broad range of implementations and can be deployed individually or in combination. Each comes with its own trade-offs, and the IAB recommends publishers weigh the risks and benefits while considering the nature of their relationship with their audience before acting.
Here's a summary of each tactic from the Publisher Ad-Blocking Primer, along with real-world examples.
1. Notice
The Notice tactic begins with detecting an ad blocker and then taking one or more of the following approaches:
Educating and informing the user about the negative implications of ad blocking and the value of advertising — for example, explaining that free content is funded by ad revenue.
Requesting that the user disable their ad-blocking software in order to continue browsing.
Asking the user to consider making a donation in lieu of viewing ads.
Informing the user that their experience will be limited if they continue using an ad blocker.
The goal of Notice isn't to force anyone to do anything — it's to open a dialogue about the user's ad-blocking choices and encourage a particular action. The Guardian is one of many publishers using this approach:
2. Access Denial
Access Denial takes things a step further by restricting access to the site (or specific sections of it) until the user completes a publisher-defined action — such as disabling their ad blocker, subscribing, registering, or making a donation.
Forbes is a well-known example of a publisher deploying the Access Denial tactic:
3. Tiered Experience
Rather than blocking access outright, the Tiered Experience tactic delivers a limited or modified version of a site to users with ad blockers enabled, while offering the full experience to those without. A common implementation is capping the number of articles ad-blocker users can read per month — say, five — while allowing unrestricted access to everyone else.
This approach is conceptually similar to the metered paywalls many publishers already use to push visitors toward paid subscriptions. The New York Times and The Economist are examples of publishers using tiered or metered access models:
4. Payment From Visitors
Payment From Visitors covers both monetary and non-monetary exchanges. A publisher might ask a visitor to fill in a survey, provide their email address, or pay a small fee to access content. The most common implementations are monetary, and typically take one of these forms:
Subscription: A visitor pays — or provides basic information — for ongoing access to content. bild.de is one publisher using this model in the context of ad blocking.
Punch-Card: A visitor pays for a fixed number of content accesses (e.g., $10 for 10 articles).
Timed Pass: A visitor pays for access over a set period (e.g., $10 for one month).
Members-Only Section: A visitor pays to unlock content or features available exclusively to paying members.
5. Ad Reinsertion
Ad Reinsertion is arguably the most aggressive tactic on the list, as it works by bypassing ad blockers entirely to serve ads regardless. It involves three main methods:
Obfuscation: Ad files are renamed and repositioned on the page to avoid being detected by ad-blocker filter lists.
In-Browser: Software running in the browser modifies the requests sent to ad resources so that they don't match patterns the blocker is looking for.
On-Server: Using a process known as server-side ad stitching (also called ad insertion or dynamic ad insertion), ads are delivered from the same server as the content itself, making them indistinguishable from regular page content and effectively invisible to blockers.
6. Payment to Ad-Blocker Companies
Where the previous tactics are largely technical, this one is a business solution. It involves paying to be whitelisted by ad-blocker software providers so that your ads are allowed through.
Adblock Plus (ABP), one of the most widely used ad blockers, runs an Acceptable Ads Program through which companies can apply to have their ads exempted from blocking — provided those ads meet ABP's criteria.
A snapshot of ABP's whitelist:
7. Payment to Visitors
This tactic flips the revenue relationship by rewarding users directly for engaging with advertising. That might mean sharing a portion of ad revenue with readers, or giving users in-game bonuses (such as extra playing time) in exchange for watching an ad in a mobile game.
Are These Seven Tactics a Long-Term Fix?
These methods may prove useful in the short term, but they're unlikely to solve the underlying problem — and some carry real risks of alienating audiences further. Native advertising offers one alternative path, since it isn't typically blocked by ad-blocker software (at least not yet). But the more durable solution lies elsewhere.
The ad-blocking problem didn't emerge in a vacuum. Annoying and intrusive ad formats, malware-infested ad networks, and the misuse of user data are what drove people to install blockers in the first place. Any lasting fix has to address those root causes — which means advertisers working to make ads more relevant through content personalization, safer and privacy-compliant, and genuinely less disruptive to the people seeing them.