• by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, June 24, 2016

Companies offering anti-ad-blocking tools are popping up all over the place. These companies are hoping to cash in on the industry’s furor over ad blocking by marketing software designed to confront its effects.

Admiral, PageFair, Sourcepoint, and Secret Media are among those companies aiding publishers to recoup revenues lost from ad blocking.  Admiral’s products, for example, help publishers show ads to users who have ad blockers enabled.

Now along comes ReviveAds, yet another anti-ad-blocking service provider, which recently conducted an analysis on its platform of the percentage of ad blocking users by country, language they speak, and the operating systems and browsers they use. The company says it represents more than 15 million global users.

Among the highlights of ReviveAds’ analysis:

• Americans lead the world in ad blocking—20% of all ad blocking traffic comes from the U.S. In fact, eMarketer, earlier this week came out with its first projections on ad blocking in the U.S. to find that in 2016, 69.8 million Americans will use an ad blocker, an increase of 34.4% over last year. Next year, that figure will grow another 24%, to 86.6 million people.

• Pound-for-pound, Germany has the largest base of ad-block users—18% of all blockers come from Deutschland. Don’t forget, Germany’s population is a quarter of the size of the U.S.

• Windows users are five times more likely to use ad blockers, and mobile users—Android and iOS—don't even make up 1% of ad-blocking traffic broken down by operating system.

• Google Chrome is the most popular browser for ad-blocker users, and, together with Firefox,  makes up 92% of traffic broken down by browser.  Ad blockers were found in 54% of Chrome users and 38% of Firefox users.

• The current market shows that 22% of all users are currently using an ad-blocking software program to prevent ads from showing on any Web site. On Web sites, the range of blocked ads can be as little as 20% and up to 40%.  Ad-block usage has increased more than 69% in 2016 alone, according to ReviveAds, and it’s growing at an estimated 45% per month.

The global picture offers some nuances:

In the U.S., ad-blocking software was downloaded on approximately 20% of page views—that’s 45 million active users. Across Europe, the usage is even higher. Ad-block usage in Europe has grown by 35% just in the past year, increasing to 77 million monthly active users.

The estimated loss of global revenue due to blocked ads during 2015 was $21.8 billion, ReviveAds data estimates.

ReviveAds’ technology attempts to circumvent all known ad blocks for banners, pop unders, and other rich-media advertising. It has a patent pending technology. It’s already analyzed hundreds of millions of ads from the data for its study.

What’s notable about these findings is the sheer volume of ad blocking and its growth, which others have documented copiously. In the U.S., 30% of the population is using ad blockers. Thirty percent  And that figure is going to double if you take the eMarketer projections into account.

Of course numbers and data vary wildly. That’s why the industry needs an impartial third party to monitor ad blocking monthly and its cost to the industry in lost revenues. RTBlog has made the case for this before. BPA Worldwide raised its hand, but so far no one has responded.