Supply-side platform (SSP) AdSupply has issued a release version of its anti-AdBlock and Adblock Plus technology, for which the Culver City, California-based company received a patent late last year.
Popular ad-stopping browser plugins Adblock and Adblock Plus are key drivers of publisher anxiety about users disabling a major source of revenue. A report last year from Adobe/PageFair said that US ad blocking grew by nearly 50 percent in the 12 months ending last June.
AdSupply’s technology, called BlockBypass, is offered by its subsidiary, BlockIQ. Adblock and Adblock Plus, AdSupply CEO Justin Bunnell explained to me, stop an ad from loading by blocking the ad server domain called by a web page, when the page wants an ad.
AdSupply’s software works by generating in real time an encrypted alias for the ad server, passing the ad call to a proxy server, calling the actual ad server and returning the ad. Bunnell says there is no discernible latency.
But it’s a continual game of leapfrog. After a short while, AdBlock discovers the domain name of the proxy server and blocks that, as well, at which point BlockIQ generates a new domain name for the proxy. Because of this game of catch-up/rename between the ad blocking software and BlockBypass, Bunnell said his software’s effectiveness ranged from 100 percent to 75 percent throughout a day.
As the patent explains:
If [BlockByPass] detects presence of an adblocker, [it] dynamically disguises the advertisement calls within the content to avoid having the calls match entries within the adblocker’s blacklist. Specifically, [BlockByPass] uses a cipher to encrypt or otherwise obfuscate the domain name, hostname, Uniform Resource Locator (URL), or other address or request of the advertisement call. […] The bypass loader then passes the obfuscated advertisement call containing the encrypted original advertisement call and the cipher key used to perform the encryption to the bypass proxy. To ensure that the obfuscated advertisement call passing to the bypass proxy is not blocked by an adblocker, some embodiments periodically change the address (e.g., domain name) of the bypass proxy. […] The bypass proxy is a hosted service that runs on a remote machine operating independent of the user device. […] The bypass proxy then retrieves the advertisement from the corresponding advertisement server identified by the original advertisement call before forwarding the advertisement back to the appropriate bypass loader. To preserve the advertisers ability to track each user device with cookies or other means, the bypass proxy may include various header parameters including the user device IP address in the request to the advertisement server.
The website owner can set up BlockBypass to employ two other options. In one, a welcome message explains to users the value of the website and the damage that anti-ad software can inflict on the site. In another, called the BlockIQ Passwall system, no content is served until the detected ad blocking software is disabled for the site.
Bunnell said that he is unaware of any other reliable anti-Adblock/Adblock Plus technology for ad banners. Currently, he said, about a dozen sites are using BlockBypass.
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