This is a really good question! If ad blockers were at 80-90% I'd expect two main outcomes:
1. Publishers would shift to apps. Apps won't support ad blockers, and are in a much stronger position to detect them and refuse to operate until the block is removed. I'm not sure how much of this would be the "one big app" model where you use Facebook/Amazon/Reddit/Google for everything vs a "lots of little apps" model, but I'm guessing more likely the former?
2. The ad blocking arms race would accelerate dramatically. Sites would CNAME to their ad network, which would then be responsible for proxying the site and inserting ads directly into the pages. The ad network would try to change its serving approach faster than the blockers could keep up. This would look a lot like how Facebook runs ads on their site, with obfuscation to confuse blockers.
Fundamentally, publishers are offering a trade: we're willing to show you our pages if you'll view our ads. Users with ad blockers are rejecting half of the offer and taking the other half. Publishers can't force users to see the ads, but they probably will be able to use technical means to keep users from getting the content without the ads.
(Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking only for myself.)
The problem's showing up as 'Ad blockers', but the reality is that it's increasingly becoming understood to be a problem of tracking, targeting, fingerprinting and generally being bombarded by underhanded, gold-toothed, second-hand car salesmen crying out, "Trust Me!"
No thanks. Not ever.
There are application level firewalls (such as Little Snitch on macOS) that can cater to applications trying to do adware: allow the content, reject the ads. On Android you can install AFWall+ or NetGuard. On iOS you have Lockdown.
There's also pi-hole which will get more traction outside IT as this ad war continues.
The problem is a circular, chicken and egg issue. Ad companies think of news ways to track, fingerprint, monitor and inject ads, and the market will respond with new blocking techniques.
The only unique position the goog has in all of this is the 'value add' that its non-revenue products bring to the table. However, more people are looking at alternatives to those as well.
Personally, I look forward to the day that I can pi-hole google.com... and I know that your company will fight to abuse this right every day (typically with recaptcha).
Just like it's not personal to your company to try and vacuum up every single bit of data about me, it's not personal to me that I look forward to the day the goog/Big Brother dies. What was a beautiful thing: the original google search, has long passed, imho.
If a publisher wants to have ads... No worries, but if it reports back to ANY entity other than themselves AND I can trust them to not on-sell that data, then yes, sure: I'll ignore the ads that I'd never click on anyway. So for me, the only sure fire way I'd find ads acceptable these days, if those ads were text-based, used no javascript or other css/url sniffing tricks.
Until ad companies drop the idea that each person MUST be shown an ad, then there's some hope of progress. Truth be told, of all the ads I notice these days, it's the old paper billboards on the road side.
> The ad blocking arms race would accelerate dramatically
Interesting take. Why do you think that, vs publishers trying to sell their content?
A world without ads may be impossible but if it were, it would probably be more fair, as we would get to see and estimate the value of content/services.
I would not pay to use Twitter, I would simply stop using it. But I would pay to use Google Search because I find it's still the best.
1. Publishers would shift to apps. Apps won't support ad blockers, and are in a much stronger position to detect them and refuse to operate until the block is removed. I'm not sure how much of this would be the "one big app" model where you use Facebook/Amazon/Reddit/Google for everything vs a "lots of little apps" model, but I'm guessing more likely the former?
2. The ad blocking arms race would accelerate dramatically. Sites would CNAME to their ad network, which would then be responsible for proxying the site and inserting ads directly into the pages. The ad network would try to change its serving approach faster than the blockers could keep up. This would look a lot like how Facebook runs ads on their site, with obfuscation to confuse blockers.
Fundamentally, publishers are offering a trade: we're willing to show you our pages if you'll view our ads. Users with ad blockers are rejecting half of the offer and taking the other half. Publishers can't force users to see the ads, but they probably will be able to use technical means to keep users from getting the content without the ads.
(Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking only for myself.)