AdBlock research questions

[raymnit]

Hi,

I am an Information Systems researcher at Purdue University, and I am looking into the problem of Ad-Blockers and the economic implications of the same. I had a few questions I wanted answers to and was wondering how to get those. I therefore decided to post this in a forum so as to get a wide ranging set of opinion/answers to my questions. My questions are below:

1. In your experience, of working with publishers, does the usage of Ad Blocker ever throw up unusual browsing patterns from users ? – Such as increased visit durations from users who have adopted Ad Blockers (as opposed to lesser durations before adoption)?
2. Do publishers get an unintended advantage from usage of ad blockers such as the benefit of tracking of users who turned off ad blockers when visiting website?
3. Is there a trend seen in the Industry where publishers, on an average, are turning to requesting turning off of ad blocker rather than using a subscription model for displaying content?

Please let me know if I can speak with any one on your team regarding these questions. Thank you for your time in reading this post.

[lewisje]

The only relevant thing I remember was that 4chan once shared its visitor levels as measured by Google Analytics with its visitor levels as measured by CloudFlare (which runs on the backend and cannot be blocked), and it showed a huge discrepancy, pointing to substantial ad- and tracking-blocker usage.