[georgebarnett]

I certainly expect there will be a war - a highly asymmetric one. The cost of developing 'anti-ad-block' tech will exceed the cost of updating filters for some time.

It will also lead to more intrusive ads in a world where user expectations have changed. Users will become used to a "quiet" web and might just prefer to hit the back button.

Another point worth making. If your content is good enough for me to turn off my ad blocker, it's probably good enough to paywall. If not, you have no chance.

[qopp]

Not really, a site can just proxy ad content through their servers. How can an ad-blocking service tell the difference between an image needed for the site and an image that's an advertisement?

[georgebarnett]

It will be more challenging but not a big issue. Ads will still contain signals they're an ad (I'm reminded of banner ads on the Web 20 years ago).

Back hauling traffic through the site may happen, however that's a huge latency penalty and also will reduce the amount of data leakage. Networks will no longer have carte Blanche access to end users. Also worth noting is that it increases the complexity of the technical implementation from 'drop in this code' to 'get your backend team to change your architecture in this way'.