The story. Ad blockers do more than cost a publisher revenue: they hide readers from analytics, so the audience you plan against is smaller than the audience you have. WiseGuyGaming, a gaming site, measured its hidden share and then changed what it sells. (AdExchanger, 5 November 2026)
01What happened
- The site is new and its audience is hard to count. WiseGuyGaming launched in 2025 and is co-founded by CEO Mike Smith and his son Mikhail. Its technically minded readers are disproportionately likely to use advanced ad blockers.
- It measured the blind spot with two setups. Working with consultant Don Marti, the site ran FouAnalytics twice: once as a normal third-party script, which the EasyPrivacy list blocks, and once served through a first-party proxy pass. Visitors who blocked only the third-party version were counted as likely ad-blocking humans, or as invalid traffic that slipped past bot filters.
- The answer was about 18%. That is the share of the audience using ad-blocking technology. The method means comparing two dashboards in separate browser tabs, Marti noted.
- The response was format, not a wall. The site is producing more sponsored and native content, which blockers do not target. Editors are using the blocking audience’s traffic patterns to guide coverage.
- Next come owned channels. It plans a paid subscription and will use email and push notifications to reach the roughly 18%.
02What it means inside a GAM network
The useful part is the measurement trick. Most publishers read their audience from one analytics tool, and if that tool is on a blocklist it undercounts the people most likely to block ads. uBlock Origin, popular with serious gamers, uses both EasyList and EasyPrivacy, according to Marti.
That undercount reaches the ad stack. Sessions you cannot see are sessions you cannot report to buyers, and impressions on pages where ads are blocked never render. Both depress the numbers behind your rate card.
Caution: the 18% is one small site’s figure for one unusually technical audience. A general-interest site should expect a different number, and the source gives no revenue effect for the changes.
03What publishers should do about it
04The bottom line
A blocked reader is still a reader. The first job is counting them honestly; the second is selling to them in a format they have not blocked.
If your gaming inventory is under-monetized, see our AdX for Games program.