There’s been a lot of debate among analysts with regards to the impact of ad blockers, but never has anyone ever said that ad blocking would impact ad agencies, publishers or networks in a good way. Well…. That was until a couple days ago. Here’s what was published in Ad Age a well-reputed magazine for digital marketers:Perhaps the presence of ad-blocking technology will force publishers to clean up their sites, speeding up and enhancing the overall experience -- including the delivery of ads. As evidenced year after year during the Superbowl, it is not always the ads themselves that people dislike; it is the disruption of getting done what they need to get done. Now that’s a serious backwards ass way of trying to look at the glass half full rather than half empty. But, seriously folks, let’s get realistic here. If ad blocking is more widely adopted by consumers this will only drive the cost of pre-existing ad units higher, and would negatively affect many within the ecosystem as higher pricing doesn’t always offset the impact of fewer ad units. But then again, Adam Broitman (from Ad Age) makes some salient points about ads loading slower and making websites less usable in general. I understand his point of view, because my Firefox browser quite literally chokes on some websites, because the website pushes CPU/memory utilization well beyond friendly levels (I run a 6th generation Core i7-U series CPU). But, this is due to the poor implementation of ad units as some companies are actually dumb enough to run websites that are overly bloated with excessive Java/Adobe scripts that clog up system memory. That’s only in minor cases where media executives are so clueless they invest into zero ad-technology to make them more friendly to mobile/desktop devices. Of course, the real reason consumers are turning to ad blockers is due to privacy and convenience. Also, this issue over privacy has never actually been settled. Many in the internet blogosphere are total shysters that prey on the fears of consumers by mentioning numerous scenarios where sharing personal data with ad networks will result in a loss of privacy, or misuses of personal information, which isn’t factual. Furthermore, some would rather not view ads at the detriment of web publishers… sort of like the freeloaders who use backdoor networks to access pirated copies of movies and books at the peril of music publishers and movie studios. Source: IAB On the other hand, a recent report from IAB mentions this issue can be mitigated for some web publishers assuming they require disabling of ad blocking software to access the site. However, asking someone to go into their ad block settings to add a website to their exception list is a bit of a stretch. Hence, I’m skeptical of that survey report, because it discounts how lazy the average internet user is, and just how inconsiderate most content consumers on the internet actually are. The fact is, investors have to be cautious in this environment and choose stocks that aren’t dependent on web banner advertising. The companies that come to mind are Facebook, Twitter (to a lesser extent) and Google. Google’s exposure to display, pre-roll and in stream video ads are offset with robust user metric growth in some of its web properties. Eventually, I could imagine some websites requiring users to disable ad-blocking in their terms of use, or develop some user opt-in that automatically prevent ad-blocking from occurring. The loss from ad-blocking was estimated at $21.8 billion in 2015, according to Adobe and Page Fair. Therefore, industry wide effects are already materializing, but the extent to which it will affect company fundamentals is very limited for internet names that have native ad-content built into the app, or operate a business model that’s not dependent on advertising. End verdict: ad blocking is bad for web publishers. Invest into companies with limited exposure to banners, and avoid media companies that are overly reliant on banner ads like Yahoo or News Corp for example.