Join us Sept. 14-16 in Miami to connect with top publishing leaders
Everyone is battling ad blockers, from publishers to ad tech companies. At last week’s Digiday Publishing Summit, Complex Media’s CEO Rich Antoniello says ad blocking is “a really serious thing” for him in particular: Up to 21 percent of his audience uses ad blockers, an increase from just 8 percent a year ago. (The company even fines its own employees who use ad blockers. Antoniello said, “the cookie jar is filling.”) Kenneth Suh of Unruly called ad blocking “the topic du jour,” though we’re only in the early days of the phenomenon. Here’s what publishers and ad tech companies had to say on ad blocking.
More in Media
An anatomy of the creator brand trip’s midlife crisis
The brand trip as we know it may be dead, but a newer, more genuine and engaging format is rising from its ashes.
European publishers are getting hit harder by AI bot scraping, report finds
European publishers face more AI bot scraping, fewer referrals and more ignored robots.txt rules than North American sites, report finds.
Walmart-backed gaming publication lays off editorial team
Brandy Berthelson — who had been Restart’s editor-in-chief — said on Bluesky last Friday that the “entire editorial team” at Restart was laid off.