Supposedly, the epiphany moment for ad-blocking was when Howard Stern, theAmerican King of All Media, discovered the existence of ad-blocking software, live during one of his popular radio shows in August. That was right before Apple released its ‘content blocking’ option in September's release of iOS 9.
During that same time, PageFair and Adobe, published a report claiming that ad-blocking software will be used by something close to 200m users in 2015 and cost the industry (a greatly exaggerated) 22bn in foregone advertising revenue.
Mayhem has followed since with arguments framing ad-blocking as the biggest catastrophe or the best thing to happen in advertising since it turned digital. Worried publishers such as Conde Nast and Axel Springer have taken commercial (i.e. paywalls) or legal measures to prevent visitors from using ad-blocking software while others have been partnering with ad-tech companies to circumvent the new devil.