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Adblock Circumvention Strategies: Ad Reinsertion, Ad Replacement, Ad Recovery

Having blocked ads for over 6 years already, ReviveAds has served ads to over 1.2 billion ad-blocked sessions to date. It’s an industry we live and breathe every day, but the basic terminology of the industry is still poorly understood by the advertising community.

The three terms: Ad reinsertion, ad replacement and ad recovery are often conflated. While they’re similar from a user perspective (they all serve ads past ad blockers), there are some crucial differences.

Here are 3 adblock circumvention terms you need to know:

1. Ad Reinsertion:

Ad reinsertion is a generic term for any technology which serves ads to adblock users by “reinserting” ad content into a previously blocked placement.  Ad reinsertion may involve inserting the originally (blocked) ad content, or it may serve new ad content from a new or different source.

 2. Ad Replacement:

Ad replacement is a specific type of ad reinsertion which involves successful detection of an adblocker, and then serving a new and different ad request to a separate (unblocked) server to fill the originally blocked placement. The end user still sees an ad in the previously blocked placement, but that content is different from the originally blocked content.

 3. Ad Recovery:

Ad replacement is a specific type of ad reinsertion which involves re-routing the originally blocked ad content. Once adblock is detected and the originally intended advertising content is determined to have been blocked, the original ad is read into a different location in the cloud and re-served from an alternate and unblocked location.  The end user sees an ad in the previously blocked placement, and that ad is exactly the same ad they would have seen had they not been using an ad blocker.

For more information about ReviveAds ad reinsertion platform, see ReviveAds.com, or read our quick overview of the ReviveAds platform.