The ‘topic du jour’ for publishers and ad tech companies: Ad blockers

By Hannah Yi • September 22, 2015 •

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.