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Pirates lose their ad money thanks to VPN?

VPN allows circumventing geographical restriction of access to certain web-site if it is blocked. But most web-sites, including those “pirate”, rely on advertising; their most part of revenue is derived from advertising. One informational agency spoke with operator of one so called pirate site. What exactly distributes such site it is unknown, but the operator says some interesting things.

VPN “kills” traffic for web-sites blocked due to different reasons. Internet users visiting blocked web-site through VPN make good traffic statistic for such web-site but in the terms of advertising they are useless. Because targeted ad banners or any other type of ad will be shown for those territories the traffic comes from. In other words, if the internet user from Russia would visit blocked pirate web-site through VPN, technically, from the machine point of view, it can visit it from UK, Netherlands etc.

Advertisers pay money only for those internet users which they can define by geographical criterion. The citizens residing in or visiting the web-site from UK, USA or Germany in the terms of advertising are “evaluated” much higher than citizens residing in or visiting web-site from China or India. For VPN users advertisers don’t pay or pay little. But not only one VPN messes the advertising eco-system, TOR also plays its role. For TOR users advertisers also don’t want to pay. Demand causes the offer. Now there are companies proposing services to identify VPN.

But there are different types of advertising. Some web-sites have direct ad agreements. Some web-sites use some alternative to advertising banners like native advertising, universal advertisement, suitable for most geographical regions (like adult content, games etc). In other words web-sites from so called “notorious list” are adapting to current conditions. Right holders hope to cut off pirate web-sites from revenue flows. The customers, who make traffic for web-sites and revenues for right holders chose the easiest way for them – whether it is streaming or romantic evening in cinema.

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