Nithyanand, R;
Khattak, S;
Javed, M;
Vallina-Rodriguez, N;
Falahrastegar, M;
Powles, JE;
Cristofaro, ED;
... Murdoch, SJ; + view all
(2016)
Adblocking and Counter Blocking: A Slice of the Arms Race.
In:
Proceedings of the 6th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI '16).
USENIX: Austin, TX, USA.
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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 antiadblocking 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.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Adblocking and Counter Blocking: A Slice of the Arms Race |
| Event: | 6th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI '16) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci16/workshop-... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1508430 |
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