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.
Seeing static banner ads on 2000s websites without popups or tracking: 🤷♂️
Blocking ads on Firefox after popups and other crap started: 😀
Browsing the internet on Android before I realised the browser supports addons: 🤮
Blocking ads and tracking on Android via uBlock origin and Privacy Badger: 😀👍
My feeling of guilt when scummy megacorporations miss out on ad revenue:
There are a couple of steps missing at the beginning. There was a time when we only blocked popups; other types of ad were fine, but popups were annoying enough that they needed special attention, and the popup-blocker was usually built-in to the browser without needing an extension. It took a couple of years for the non-popup types of ads to become obnoxious enough to warrant blocking.
Even better: system-wide DNS adblocking on Android. Get rid of in-app ads too.
I use a degoogled CalyxOS phone so all those apps that load ads via Google services don’t even work, or they work and the ads don’t load haha. One caveat is that I can’t use paid apps either though, I’m not against those.
But yeah system wide blocking is definitely the most thorough method!
Rethink DNS
Would you care to expand on that?
Link
Oh, haha. I thought you were telling me I should rethink using a DNS adblocker.
I see, hehehe 😄
😛