Adblocking and Counter-Blocking: A Slice of the Arms Race
Title | Adblocking and Counter-Blocking: A Slice of the Arms Race |
Publication Type | Conference Paper |
Year of Publication | 2016 |
Authors | Nithyanand, R., Khattak S., Javed M., Vallina-Rodriguez N., Falahrastegar M., Powles J. E., De Cristofaro E., Haddadi H., & Murdoch S. J. |
Published in | Proceedings of the 6th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI '16) |
Abstract | Adblocking tools like Adblock Plus continue to rise in popularity, potentially threatening the dynamics of advertising revenue streams. In response, a number of publishers have ramped up efforts to develop and deploy mechanisms for detecting and/or counter-blocking adblockers (which we refer to as anti-adblockers), effectively escalating the online advertising arms race. In this paper, we develop a scalable approach for identifying third-party services shared across multiple websites and use it to provide a first characterization of anti-adblocking across the Alexa Top-5K websites. We map websites that perform anti-adblocking as well as the entities that provide anti-adblocking scripts. We study the modus operandi of these scripts and their impact on popular adblockers. We find that at least 6.7% of websites in the Alexa Top-5K use anti-adblocking scripts, acquired from 12 distinct entities – some of which have a direct interest in nourishing the online advertising industry. |
Acknowledgment | The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback on preparation of the final version of this paper. Rishab Nithyanand was supported by a Open Technology Fund Emerging Technology Senior Fellowship. Sheharbano Khattak and Steven J. Murdoch were supported by The Royal Society [grant number UF110392]; Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/L003406/1]. Emiliano De Cristofaro was supported by a Xerox University Affairs Committee award and EU grant H2020-MSCA-RISE “ENCASE”. |
URL | https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.05077.pdf |
ICSI Research Group | Networking and Security |