This is just the next step in a game of cat and mouse. Ad delivering and ad blocking entities (aka Corporate and Consumers) are in a co-evolutionary state, sim

This is just the next step in a game of cat and mouse. Ad delivering and ad blocking entities (aka Corporate and Consumers) are in a co-evolutionary state, similar to predators and prey. They will evolve to be more and more skilful. One state in future might be that ad blocking uses a combination of crowd sourcing and AI to detect advertisement. To thwart bot detection the client will behave similar to a non-adblock client, this means, download everything. To thwart time-based ad blocking blocking (deliver the good stream only after the ad time has passed), buffer everything. The downside is loss of spontaneity but some adblock users already have accepted this. One way to overcome this loss is having crowd-sourced lists of good material and then automatically download the good stuff and watch this selection. I wouldn't worry too much. EDIT: A thought struck me. This is exactly like in nature. There are pests and life has learnt to arrange with pests and non-food stuff. Some will suffer and even die, but that's life. Content consumers will arrange with ads like life arrage with pests and non-food. And now I understand why pests and non-food exist at all.