They call it “dark traffic” - ads that are not seen by tech-savvy users who have excellent ad blockers.
Not surprised that its growing. The web is unusable without an ad blocker and its only getting worse, and will continue to get worse every month.
My kid hasn’t ever seen an ad on any streaming service or any web page, ever. And I block ads via DNS. We don’t have any kind of live TV service or cable so they literally have just never seen any ads, ever.
Sometimes if we’re out at a restaurant, some TV is playing live content and an ad runs. My kid is shocked like it’s the first time he ever ate sugar.
Glad I can keep that toxic trash out of my house and out of his life.
Unrelated, but this just brought back memories from long ago when I was a kid and used to watch the advertising channels on purpose. Endless stream of useless gym equipment and weird kitchen tools; they painted such a bizarre and surreal world full of repetition, forced plastic smiles and all sorts of almost otherwordly things that had nothing to do with reality. It was fascinating, almost like watching something of the fae folk