Tracking Ad Blocker

[jmbolfing]

There is this very well documented solution how to track Adblocker numbers in the Documentation base:

https://community.tealiumiq.com/t5/iQ-Tag-Management/Tracking-Ad-Blocker-Numbers-in-Google-Universal...

I have two questios about this:

1) This apparently sends off an event call to Google Analytics once the page has fully rendered. Is there an option that this could be included with the pageview request in a custom dimension for example? Or is it because of possible performance issues that this is handled in a seprate request?

2) There are various adblockers around working in different ways. Which type of adblockers does this script cover and is it still supported and/or updated?

Many thanks and kind regards...Jean-Marc

[STerjeson · Accepted solution]

Hi @jmbolfing, this probably won't be a fully comprehensive answer to your questions, but here are a couple comments and thoughts on your query...

1) You can certainly add a custom dimension to the event call, but probably not on the actual pageview request due to timing issues. The script referenced will take a certain time to run (async) and that will not likely match the GA tag firing sequence. You could try to control the timing but I wouldn't bother in this case. The event fire would be the most appropriate method.

2) This script seems to be only for checking injected ad types (could be wrong, just an initial impression of the script logic), but there are other things you can do to check for "trackers" and "analytics" blockers as well. I have a script set up to track if GTM and GA instances are not loaded on the page and I pass that through to Audience Stream as a "Tracking Blocked" audience segment.

[jmbolfing]

Hi @STerjeson

Many thanks for sharing your thoughts.

1) So timing is the reason for the script to fire a dedicated event. 

2) Your solution sounds interesting. Does this mean you have a GTM container just for the sake of checking if it is there or not? Do you execute your script with Tealium? If yes, isn't there a risk that if GTM is blocked, Tealium will be too and the script cannot run?

[STerjeson]

@jmbolfing, my client has a requirement for having a GTM container in place (not my idea) along with GA. The script I put in place is mainly to help monitor for ad click fraud more than anything, but it also helps point out how often GTM and GA fail to load, or dont load in time, along with people who have the tracker blocked. Yes, there is the potential for Tealium to be blocked as well. If you wanted to monitor for that, you would have to have the script directly on the page probably.