Acceptable Ads Solutions Monetize Less Than 30% of Ad Blocked Traffic For Publishers

Ad blocking traffic is one of the most persistent revenue leaks in digital publishing, and many publishers have turned to Acceptable Ads as a way to recover what they can.

But while the initiative, managed by eyeo — the company behind AdBlock and Adblock Plus — was once seen as a major innovation, it now faces limitations that publishers can’t afford to ignore.

The most pressing issue? Acceptable Ads is only compatible with 20-30% of ad blocked page views. For the remaining 70%+ of page views, publishers are unable to serve ads. This limitation represents a significant blindspot, and for many publishers, it’s an invisible one (much of this traffic does not show up in analytics).

What is Acceptable Ads, and why is it limited?

Acceptable Ads was launched as a middle ground to balance the needs of ad blocking users and publishers. The premise is simple: instead of blocking all ads, users of participating ad blockers (such as AdBlock and Adblock Plus) are shown “acceptable” ads that meet specific criteria — such as being less intrusive and adhering to size and placement guidelines.

In return, publishers and adtech vendors pay eyeo to participate in the program and have their ads restored on websites that would otherwise be ad-free.

But there’s a catch: Acceptable Ads only works with ad blockers that subscribe to its terms. The major players here are AdBlock and Adblock Plus, which collectively make up 20-30% of adblocked page views.

The remaining 70-80% of adblocked traffic comes from more hardcore ad blockers —such as uBlock Origin, AdGuard, Brave, Ghostery, and others — that do not participate in the Acceptable Ads program and completely block ads from being served. This traffic remains unmonetised.

How Blockthrough fits in — and why it can’t cover the gap

Many publishers who want to take advantage of Acceptable Ads do so through Blockthrough, a company acquired by eyeo in 2022. Blockthrough’s core product integrates Acceptable Ads into publisher ad stacks, making it easy to serve compliant ads to ad blocking users.

While Blockthrough is widely used and effective within the Acceptable Ads ecosystem, it suffers from the same fundamental limitation: it can only monetize the 20-30% of page views tied to ad blockers that accept Acceptable Ads.

For the majority of ad blocked traffic — those using hardcore ad blockers —Blockthrough is incompatible. No ads get served, and publishers earn no revenue.

Why publishers don’t see the problem

One of the most significant challenges is that publishers aren’t fully aware of the scale of the problem. Blockthrough’s analytics tends to favour tracking the portion of ad blocked traffic that it can monetize. These are page views generated by the the ad blockers owned by it parent company, eyeo. The rest — 70%+ of ad blocked page views — remains unmeasured and unmonetized.

Standard ad blocking analytics, including Blockthrough’s, are insufficient at detecting traffic from hardcore ad blockers because those blockers don’t just block ads they also block on-site measurement scripts.

Without the right tools in place, publishers have no visibility into how much of their audience is slipping through the cracks.

The scale of the problem

Even eyeo’s own data highlights the gap. The company reports:

• 350 million users globally use ad blockers that participate in Acceptable Ads

• 912 million users globally run ad blockers overall

By their own numbers this suggests only 38% of global ad blocked page views are covered by Acceptable Ads, leaving 62% unmonetized. However, more advanced detection methods used by publishers suggest the number is actually worse — 70%+.

Update: an eyeo sponsored article placed in AdMonsters confirms that Acceptable Ads monetises 25% of ad blocked page views:

This leaves 75% on the table.

For publishers with high percentages of younger and tech-savvy audiences — who tend to favour hardcore ad blockers — the impact can be even more severe.

Acceptable Ads is no longer enough

When Acceptable Ads launched, it was a promising solution. It provided publishers with a way to recover some lost revenue without alienating users. But as hardcore ad blockers continue to grow in popularity, the 30% ceiling on monetizable traffic is now a significant limitation.

The failure to monetize 70%+ of ad blocked traffic isn’t just a technical issue — it’s an existential threat to publishers already struggling with shrinking ad margins, signal loss from privacy regulations, and growing competition for user attention.

Without addressing the blindspot, publishers will continue to lose billions of dollars each year to unmeasured audiences.

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