“The Hidden Cost of Adblock: Adblock’s Impact on Website Traffic”, 2017-02 (; backlinks):
This whitepaper presents the primary findings of new research by Professor Benjamin Shiller (Brandeis University), Professor Joel Waldfogel (University of Minnesota and the National Bureau of Economic Research), and Dr. Johnny Ryan (PageFair).
Research of 2,574 websites over 3 years reveals that adblock has a hidden cost: it not only reduces small and medium publishers’ revenue, it also reduces their traffic.
Studying the changing rate of desktop adblock usage and traffic rank from April 2013—June 2016 reveals that adblock usage is undermining many websites’ ability to invest in content. Affected websites then attract fewer visitors, and so their traffic declines. The full paper is available from NBER, the US National Bureau of Economic Research.
This is the adblock paradox: users may avoid ads in the short term, but ultimately undermine the value they can derive from the web. To reverse this phenomenon, publishers must listen to users’ legitimate grievances about online ads and respond by fixing the problems. Once they have remedied the users’ grievances, publishers can choose to serve their ads using technology that adblock companies cannot tamper with.