• The Wall Street Journal, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:21 AM

The Wall Street Journal notes that the ad-blocking conversation has finally hit pop culture in the form of an episode of "South Park" where it was satirized in recent episodes. During the Comedy Central show, a character named Jimmy "has the rare ability to distinguish between news and advertising. Later, a man tells Jimmy that ads adapted after humans created ad blockers. 'What if I were to tell you that ads have become smarter than us, and now they’re manipulating everything we do?' the character says. Ads became sentient and adapted to 'disguise themselves as news in order to survive' after humans created ad blockers, the man says." People are increasingly frustrated with ads and the vehicles that advertrtisers and publishers are using to collect data on consumers. Often what looks like editorial content is actually an ad, a native ad.

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