Highlights:

• Live on 43 websites within 3 months
• Recovered ad impressions: 5X more than legacy ad recovery vendor
• Recovered revenue: 5X more than legacy ad recovery vendor

Business Problem

Publift is a leading ad monetization partner for independent publishers. The company works with over 800 publishers, helping them grow programmatic revenue through its proprietary Fuse platform — a unified ad management and yield-optimization solution.

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As a publisher-focused business, Publift is always exploring new ways to increase revenue for its partners. But, a growing share of its managed traffic was becoming invisible, lost to a new generation of “brutal” adblockers that block not only ads but also analytics scripts.

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These blockers don’t just stop ads from appearing; they blind publishers entirely. The result is a hidden audience of users who can’t be measured in dashboards or monetized by ads — known as dark traffic. According to industry data provided by Ad-Shield, 79% of all adblocked traffic now qualifies as dark traffic, making it one of the fastest-growing sources of unmonetized inventory on the open web.

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This shift happened out of view, forcing the adblocking ecosystem to evolve quickly in ways that negatively impacted the entire publishing industry. For Publift, this meant billions of monthly ad impressions were going unmeasured and unmonetized, quietly eroding publisher earnings industry-wide. In response, they became one of the first ad monetization companies to identify the problem, prioritize it, and mobilize to solve it — ensuring they continue delivering strong outcomes for their publishers.

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We chose Ad-Shield because they are the only adblock recovery solution that specialize in dark traffic and return agency to publishers over how they monetize their audience. With dark traffic now making up 79% of all ad blocking traffic, having a dedicated solution to deal with it has become table stakes.

- Dave Bickell, Head of Operations of Publift

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Objective

Publift faced two major problems:

1. Brutal adblockers were preventing accurate measurement of total user traffic, leaving its true size unknown and under-reported by a significant margin
2. This significant margin was also blocking monetization capabilities, including ads and adblock walls, making the traffic near worthless

Goals:

• Make dark traffic measurable and visible within analytics
• Restore Publift’s existing ad stack to monetize these users
• Deliver incremental revenue without compromising user experience

Requirements:

• Analytics to measure dark traffic
• “Plug-and-play” installation
• Restore Publift’s ad stack
• Generate incremental, high-RPM ad revenue
• Support multiple ad formats (display, animated, etc)
• Deliver a user-friendly experience
• Provide strong technical and sales enablement support
• Be a long-term sustainable solution, not a temporary one
• Minimal ongoing maintenance for Publift’s tech and ad-ops team

All requirements met? ✅

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Solution

Publift began using Ad-Shield in May 2025, testing it alongside its existing adblock recovery vendor, which, like all legacy recovery tools, is not compatible with dark traffic.

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The rollout started with measuring dark traffic on a small number of websites and was consistently expanded as desirable results became predictable and clear. From the very start, Ad-Shield Analytics detected and reported large dark traffic audiences that had previously gone completely unmeasured.

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Where previous analytics tools only detected a fraction of ad blocking traffic, Ad-Shield measured the full spectrum — including extension-based, browser-level, app, VPN, and network-level blocking.

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Implementation was fast and frictionless. Publift-managed publishers added a custom script that was able to both measure and reintroduce ads to dark traffic. First, Publift measured the quantity of dark traffic present across its network of sites. Soon after, it turned on ad reintroduction by restoring its ad stack.

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Ad-Shield served fully compliant, user-friendly ads in line with the Better Ads Standards. This allowed Publift to re-engage adblocked audiences without alienating users or resorting to intrusive “Turn off your adblocker” messaging.

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Throughout the process, Ad-Shield’s technical and customer support teams provided hands-on help — including:

• Integration and configuration support
• Sales training for Publift’s client-facing teams
• Regular performance reviews and tactical check-ins

This partnership-led approach ensured the rollout was both technically smooth and strategically aligned with Publift’s revenue objectives.

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Results

Publift decided to move forward with Ad-Shield on an ongoing basis. The test revealed a significant untapped opportunity in dark traffic, which legacy tools were not designed to address. Ad-Shield had the technology to fulfil this need to the highest standard.

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Key outcomes:

• Live on 43 websites within 3 months
• Recovered ad impressions: 5X more than legacy ad recovery vendor
• Recovered revenue: 5X more than legacy ad recovery vendor

In July 2025 — just two months into testing — Publift began fully transitioning to Ad-Shield on sites where publishers approved the change, as part of its strategy to address evolving adblocking challenges. The test demonstrated that Ad-Shield not only uncovered previously invisible dark traffic but also delivered higher yields on the portion of adblocked inventory that was already addressable.

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Ad-Shield’s solution set a new standard for the ad blocking era in which dark traffic now dominates, which is why we’ve adopted Ad-Shield wherever possible to strengthen our future growth plans.

- Dave Bickell, Head of Operations of Publift

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Conclusion

Traditional adblock recovery methods are no longer sufficient for the modern open web. They only measure and monetize 21% of adblocking traffic, leaving the remaining 79% — known as dark traffic — untapped.

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Ad-Shield changed that for Publift. Within weeks, Publift transformed hidden, unmonetized inventory into a meaningful new revenue channel, achieving 5X additional adblocking revenue recovery.

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Results: Comprehensive measurability of adblocked audiences, consistently stronger ad yields, user-friendly experiences, and a sustainable approach that helps publishers grow revenue over the long term.

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