# A free ad-blocker extension hit 300k installs in three months: it grew by pushing pop-ups to sell pop-up blocking · Web

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/web/web_proadblocker.com.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> It launched two weeks before uBlock Origin was removed from the Chrome Web Store. It also bought pop-up ads on pirate and streaming sites, where pop-ups are most common, to drive installs. Once installed, it likely pays back through affiliate links injected into search results.

[Web](https://stringers.io/en/web/index.md) · 11-6 written

Ad Blocker Pro(proadblocker.com) · proadblocker.com

# A free ad blocker, 300k installs in three months: it grew by using pop-ups to sell pop-up blocking

**What it is** A free Chrome ad blocker, with proadblocker.com as its website and backend.

**Why it took off** It launched two weeks before uBlock Origin was removed from the Chrome Web Store, then bought pop-up ads on pirate and streaming sites, where pop-ups are most common, to drive installs. Once installed, it likely pays back by inserting promotional links into search results for a cut of the revenue.

**C** **How you could follow** Don't build another ad blocker. Copy the structure: watch for the next big player being pushed out by platform rules, launch a compliant generic-name alternative a few weeks ahead, buy cheap traffic where the problem is worst, and monetize through high-frequency behavior like search.

C grade: the playbook is clear and few people know about it, but the uBO removal wave is more than two months old, there are already a dozen identical reskinned extensions, they are competing for the same pop-up traffic, and the store could mass-remove them for deceptive installs at any time. Worth studying the structure; copying the same category now isn't worth it. Few people know about it yet

Global rank 170k · 90 days ago, top 1M+

Ad Block Pro is an ad blocker for Chrome that launched in August 2026, has no paid tier, and has never been covered by press. It reached 300k users in three months, and in early November ranked #1 on the Chrome Web Store Top Charts "Notable" list. It didn't break out because of its product. The three reasons: it launched two weeks before uBlock Origin was pushed out of the Chrome Web Store; it bought pop-up ads on the sites with the most pop-ups to drive installs; and it makes money from users' searches. The playbook is easy to understand and easy to copy, but a dozen identical extensions already crowd the space.

### A 42-person-upvoted one-star review

On Oct 2026, 18, a user named Tom Davies left a one-star review on Ad Blocker Pro: "pops up contunoulsy to reinstall, so much so your subject cant be viewed, this is junk". By early November, 42 people had marked it "helpful", making it the most-upvoted review for this extension. In second place is Fern's review from Oct 24: "Didn't help anything, only gave me more ads and tried to get me to reinstall it." 22 people marked it helpful.

For an ad blocker, the most common complaint is "the pop-up keeps asking me to install it." These two negative reviews essentially spell out how it acquires users. The positive reviews on the same page are short and nearly identical: "Sweet and fun", "great site", "Smooth streaming, no annoying ads." Each has two or three to seven or eight helpful votes.

### What it is

A Chrome extension whose full store name is "Ad Blocker Pro - block ads ad blocker", stuffed with search terms. The homepage of proadblocker.com reads "Free forever · No account needed", "54,000+ filtering rules", "No dashboards, no settings maze, no upsells". Technically it is the rule-based blocking built into Chrome's new architecture (MV3), plus a script that hides ad elements, no different from dozens of similar tools. The store listing is localized into 30 languages; the developer lists only an email, with no company name or address.

Timeline:

| Date | What happened | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-04 | Domain proadblocker.com registered | Domain registration data |
| 2026-08-14 | Extension listed on the Chrome Web Store | Store page |
| 2026-08-31 | uBlock Origin removed from the Chrome Web Store; the same day it already had 100k users, with only 5 ratings | Chrome Web Store user count; reports from cyberinsider and others |
| 2026-10-04 | 200k users | Chrome Web Store user count |
| 2026-11-05 | 300k users, 67 ratings, 4.3 stars | Chrome Web Store user count |
| 2026-11 first | Top Charts "Notable" list, #1 | Store chart page |

The official site's global ranking first entered the top 10M (1k place) in Sep 976 and rose to the 5k place by Nov 170. Among real Chrome users in Australia, Canada, and Spain, it entered the top 50k; in the UK and France, the top 100k. But this traffic mostly doesn't come from people deliberately visiting the site. It comes from the extension itself phoning home: downloading rules, periodically sending stats back, plus the welcome page that opens automatically after install and the retention page after uninstall. So the site's ranking is really a shadow of the install count.

### Why these three months specifically

**First, timing.** uBlock Origin was Chrome's most trusted ad blocker. Because it refused to move to the new architecture, Google removed it from the store in August 31. Some of its users moved to the official uBO Lite, AdGuard, or Ghostery, and many others opened the store, searched "ad blocker", and installed whichever plain-named one ranked first. Ad Blocker Pro launched two weeks earlier, and by the removal date it already had 100k users. Whether it knew the removal date in advance and timed its launch to match can't be proven from outside, but the timeline fits too neatly. (inference)

**Second, paid acquisition.** Only 300 of its 67k users left a rating, a rate of 0.023%. Established extensions like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, and AdGuard sit around 0.4%, meaning each of its users leaves about a twentieth the ratings of a normal extension. People who search for an extension on their own tend to leave ratings; people pushed there by ads rarely do. The two negative reviews already show where the ads run. A similar tool, Ad Block Ninja, has more direct evidence: a review from July 2026 describes the author seeing "Tired of this? Ad Block Ninja — free on Chrome" pop up in the bottom-right corner of a pirate movie site; a post on Reddit's r/techsupport also describes Chrome opening a new tab offering Ad Block Ninja on every refresh. Malwarebytes wrote about this tactic in 2024.

The logic is simple: people fed up with pop-ups are the most eager to install an ad blocker, and pop-up ad slots on pirate and streaming sites are among the cheapest traffic on the web. Selling a fix right where the problem occurs converts well.

**Third, the store's positive feedback loop.** Once user numbers climbed, it entered the Top Charts, and the "related extensions" section on the store page is full of similar extensions linking to each other. From then on, some installs came from the store itself.

### No payment, so where does the money come from

The site says it is free forever, with no paid tier. Its privacy policy is quite detailed, though: on install, update, and uninstall it sends back an install ID, the version, **the domains of all open tabs at that time** , and "how many searches were made while the extension was running"; it also periodically sends "information about visits to search engine results pages." The policy says the data is not used for ads and not sold.

Why would an ad blocker count how many times you searched? Look at similar ones and it's clear. The privacy policy of Ad Block Wonder, section 5.2, is blunt: it shows "unobtrusive text promotion links" in Google search results, "from which we take a share of the ad revenue," "depending on your region." In other words, it inserts a few promotional links into your search results and gets paid when people click, at rates that vary by country. Ad Blocker Pro doesn't describe its monetization, but it counts searches and search-page visits, exactly the numbers this business needs to settle its accounts, so it's probably the same model. (inference, not verified against the extension code)

That also explains why it grew fastest in Australia, Canada, the UK, and Western Europe: search ad rates are high there. A pop-up install is worth roughly a few cents to a few dimes (estimate, typical industry rate, unverified). An English-speaking user who searches dozens of times a month only needs to click a few promotional links to pay back the install cost.

### Who it's competing with

Plenty, and they all look the same. Similar ones launched between 2025 and 2026 with over 100k users, and you can count more than a dozen:

| Add-ons | users | Score | Launched |
|---|---|---|---|
| AdScrubber | 500k | 4 | 2026-03 |
| Ad Block Ninja | 400k | 184 | 2026-06 |
| Ad Block Ghost | 300k | 145 | 2026-08-23 |
| Ad Block Wonder | 300k | 203 | 2025-11 |
| Stop Ads Now / All-In-One Adblocker | About 300k each | Over a hundred | 2026-04 / 06 |
| Ad Blocker Unlimited | 200k | 52 | 2026-05 |
| Ad Blocker Premium | 100k | 18 | 2026-09-21 |

(Chrome Web Store, early November)

Ratings are all under 0.1%. Ad Blocker Premium and Unlimited have privacy policies that match Ad Blocker Pro paragraph by paragraph, and all three send search counts to their own /stats/ endpoint. adblockerpremium.com and proadblocker.com were registered on the same day. Most likely one operator runs several brands and swaps in the next one when one is delisted or its reputation sinks. (Inference)

On the legit side: AdBlock has 65M users, Adblock Plus 40M, uBO Lite 22M, AdGuard 17M; Brave and Opera ship with built-in blockers. These are the real veterans. The clone extensions are only fishing for people who won't switch browsers and just search the store.

### Where the risk is

The Chrome Web Store has an explicit policy against deceptive installation practices, and pushing installs with misleading ads falls under it. Injecting content into search results runs into the single-purpose and privacy rules too. Extensions like this can be pulled in bulk at any time, which is why operators keep several brands going at once. Also, the negative reviews say "keeps nagging me to reinstall," which means plenty of people installed and then removed it. Real retention is probably far worse than the user count suggests. (Inference)

### If it were you

**Verdict:** This playbook (after a platform event, ship a generic replacement for the broken thing, buy paid traffic right where the problem shows up, monetize through search) is worth understanding. But building an ad blocker extension now isn't a good bet. The uBO delisting wave is more than two months old, there are at least a dozen copycats, and they're all bidding on the same cheap pop-up traffic.

**Who it's for:** Teams already running paid acquisition and affiliate monetization, with access to cheap traffic and tolerance for extensions getting pulled at any time. For them, it's an arbitrage that pencils out.

**Not for:** indie devs who want to build a long-term product and grow a brand and reputation. In this space nothing differentiates the products, the brands get burned through, and no reputation sticks.

**How to do it (if you still want to try):** Don't build another ad blocker. Copy the structure instead: watch for the next "big player gets pushed out by platform rules" event, like a browser extension pulled over permission policy changes or an app removed from a country's store. Have a compliant, generically named alternative ready a few weeks ahead. Then put it where users are most frustrated by the problem, and tie monetization to something they already do every day. Keep the product free, with no sign-up required.

**How to get users:** Run pop-under and push traffic, the cheap kind, only on high-CPM markets like English-speaking and Western Europe; localize store listings and put search keywords in the app name; once installs pick up, go after chart placement and the "related extensions" recommendation slots.

**Before it hits:** Ship two to four weeks before the platform event. Once it's happened, you're fighting a dozen clones for scraps.

**What would prove this wrong:** If Google batch-removes this wave of reskinned ad blockers (Ad Blocker Pro, Ninja, Wonder and the like) over the next month or two, the window on this path has closed, and even copying the structure means switching to a platform that is looser on paid acquisition and search monetization. If they're all still around half a year from now and users keep moving up the tiers, search monetization pays back more reliably than it looks, and late entrants still have room for profit.

[Website ↗](https://proadblocker.com)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| uBlock Origin / uBO Lite | Chrome | 2014 / 2022 | uBO 2026-08-31 removed from the store; uBO Lite 22M users | Open source, good reputation, no data sent out. Ad Blocker Pro is picking up the people who search the store for generic terms after uBO was pulled. |
| AdBlock / Adblock Plus | Chrome | 2009 | 65M / 40M | Veteran. Makes money through Acceptable Ads and donations. Ad Blocker Pro has no brand equity and relies on paid acquisition. |
| AdGuard / Ghostery | Chrome | 2013 / 2010 | 17M / 2M | Established company with a paid product that actively courts uBO users. Ad Blocker Pro is run by an anonymous developer. |
| Ad Block Ninja | Chrome | 2026-06-06 | 400k users, 184 ratings | Same playbook (pop-up ads on streaming sites to push installs), but on a different template and registrar, with a Swiss company address on file. Not confirmed to be the same developer. |
| Ad Blocker Unlimited / Ad Blocker Premium | Chrome | 2026-05 / 2026-09 | 200k / 100k | Almost no difference: privacy policies match paragraph for paragraph, all send data to /stats/ and count searches. Likely a reskin of the same operator. |
| Ad Block Wonder / Ghost / Stop Ads Now / AIO / AdScrubber, and others | Chrome | 2025-11~2026-08 | 10–500k each | Same paid-acquisition knockoffs. Wonder openly says it injects promo links into Google search results and takes a revenue share. |
| Brave and Opera built-in blocking / Chrome Better Ads filtering | Big-company features | Years | Browser-level | No extension needed. Ad Blocker Pro is going after Chrome users who won't switch browsers. |

Where users come from

- **Confirmed** **running pop-up ads on streaming and piracy sites to push installs** : the two most-upvoted store reviews say 'pops up continuously to reinstall' (42 people) and 'tried to get me to reinstall it' (22 people); a reviewer spotted a similar app, Ninja, in pop-ups on a piracy streaming site, and Reddit r/techsupport has people complaining about being pushed installs by pop-ups; Malwarebytes wrote about this tactic 2024 years ago

- Inference **Platform event: uBO delisted** : 2026-08-04 domain registered, 08-14 listed, 08-31 when uBO was pulled from the store that day it already had 100k users

- **Verified** **store search and featured placements** : name stuffed with keywords 'Ad Blocker Pro - block ads ad blocker', store page in 30 languages; 2026-11-07 Top Charts Notable #1; similar apps cross-link in the related extensions section

- Inferred **incentivized or templated reviews** : 0.023% of ratings are 5-star yet the average is still 4.3, and the reviews are short and template-like ('Sweet and fun', 'great site')

- Inferred **Meta / Google ads, X, press** : nothing turned up in our ad libraries or x-radar, and no press coverage found

## proadblocker.com (Ad Blocker Pro): why it got this far

> Research date 2026-11-07. Data sources: our chromestore database (item / item_snap / extops_series / related, 2026-11-01~11-07), traffic database (rank_day / crux_domain), official sites and privacy policy text, Chrome Web Store review pages and Top Charts pages, RDAP registration data, web search (Jina / Exa), x-radar.

### One line

proadblocker.com is the website and server backend for the Chrome extension "Ad Blocker Pro - block ads ad blocker" (id nigoagcimgiifniljaedijgilbfdplbb). The extension launched in 2026 August as an MV3 ad blocker, claiming to be free with no paid tier. It's not making money from the product. It's a **traffic arbitrage play** : **buying pop-up ads to drive installs** on sites loaded with them, like streaming and piracy sites, while riding the wave of **uBlock Origin 2026-08-31 being pulled from the Chrome Web Store** and users hunting for a replacement. Once installed, it makes its money through **sponsored links in search results / search revenue share** (competing products state this openly in their privacy policies; Ad Blocker Pro's policy only mentions "counting search queries"). Most of the domain's rank climb comes from the extension itself phoning home and opening install and uninstall pages, not from people visiting the website on purpose.

### 1. What it is and how the data moves

- Extension: 2026-08-14 published (store listing), current v2.6, MV3,7.01 MiB, supports 30 languages, developer display name "Ad Blocker Pro", contact email contact@proadblocker.com, no trader status, no address listed (chromestore.item).

- Permissions: `<all_urls>`, activeTab, alarms, declarativeNetRequest, scripting, storage, tabs, unlimitedStorage, webRequest (chromestore.item).

- Landing page selling points: "54,000+ filter rules", "covers 200,000+ sites", "$0, no paid tier", "Free forever" (proadblocker.com homepage). The product itself is thin: just an MV3 declarativeNetRequest ruleset, plus an element-hiding script.

- The domain proadblocker.com was registered on Cloudflare, registration date **2026-08-04** (RDAP), 10 days before the extension was listed. So it's a new site, not an old domain that changed hands. There's also a mirror site, proadblocker.net (registered 2026-08-17).

#### Data collection (key points from section 4 of proadblocker.com/privacy-policy/)

- On install, update, and uninstall, it sends the install ID, version, **the domains of every tab open at that moment** , and cumulative counters (total blocks, **"how many searches were run while the extension was on"** ).

- Periodically sends to `proadblocker.com/stats/`: block counts by domain, allowlist additions and removals, and **"information about visits to search engine results pages"** .

- The policy says it's "not used for ads or sold as data." But it specifically tracks search counts and search-results page visits, the same metrics its sister product uses to settle search monetization (see section 4).

### 2. Growth data

| Timeline | Users | Score | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-14 | Launched | – | Store published |
| 2026-08-31 | 100,000 | 5 | First extops_series reading |
| 2026-09-26 | 100,000 | 34 | extops_series |
| 2026-10-04 | 200,000 | 44 | extops_series |
| 2026-11-05 | 300,000 | 67 | extops_series / item_snap (11-06 onward, 300k) |

- **Hit 100k in under three weeks, with only 5 ratings at the time** ; now 300k users and 67 ratings, so ratings/users = **0.023%** . Established ad-blocker extensions usually sit between 0.4% and 4% (AdBlock 0.447%, ABP 0.47%, AdGuard 0.406%, Stands 3.98%; chromestore.item). That gap is a classic paid-acquisition signature (recall rule X1: ≥20k users within a year, rating rate <0.1%).

- Domain rank: Tranco 2026-09-10 first entered the top 1M (975,840), 10-03 to 259,864,11-05 to **169,744** (best day 167,469); not on the chart 90 days ago (traffic.rank_day). CrUX global 2026-09 entered the top 500k; au / ca / es entered the top 50k, fr / gb the top 100k, de / it / nl / us the top 500k; 2026-08 already reached the top 500k in au / ca / es / nl (traffic.crux_domain). **Growth is fastest in English-speaking and Western European high-value markets** , matching the level of search ad CPCs.

- On 2026-11-07, **Ad Blocker Pro was #1 on the Chrome Web Store Top Charts "Notable" chart** (chromewebstore.google.com/top-charts/notable). The store's featured placement then drives organic installs back to it.

### 3. Competitors: ad-blocker extensions on Chrome (all in chromestore.item, 2026-11-07)

**Veterans and big players**

- AdBlock (getadblock.com) 65M, 2009 years; Adblock Plus (eyeo) 40M, 2009 years; **uBlock Origin Lite** 22M, 2022 years (uBO official MV3 version); AdGuard 17M, 2013 years; Stands 4M; Ghostery 2M; AdBlocker Ultimate 2M; Pie Adblock 2M (2024 years).

- **uBlock Origin (MV2) 2026-08-31 was pulled from the Chrome Web Store** (documented by cyberinsider.com, ublockorigin.com/chrome, Reddit r/Piracy and r/tutanota). Some of its long-time users moved to uBO Lite, AdGuard and Ghostery (Ghostery's blog is targeting exactly this crowd), and others just searched "ad blocker" in the store and installed whatever came up.

- Built into browsers: Brave and Opera have built-in blocking. Chrome's own "heavy ad intervention" and Better Ads filtering only stop the worst offenders.

**A batch of MV3 clone extensions that appeared in 2025–2026 (ratings sit at 0.02%–0.1%, which looks like paid acquisition)**

| Name | users | Rating | Launched | Website |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ad Block Ninja (WestHive, Lancy, Switzerland) | 400k | 184 | 2026-06-06 | ninja-block.com |
| Stop Ads Now | 300k | 123 | 2026-04-07 | stopads-now.com |
| All-In-One Adblocker | 300k | 135 | 2026-06-12 | aioadblocker.com |
| Ad Block Wonder | 300k | 203 | 2025-11-10 | wonderadblock.com |
| Ad Block Ghost | 300k | 145 | 2026-08-23 | adblockghost.com |
| Ad Blocker Unlimited | 200k | 52 | 2026-05-18 | adblockerunlimited.com |
| Advanced Ad Blocker | 200k | 64 | 2024-10-24 | advancedadblocker.com |
| AdScrubber | 500k | 4 | 2026-03-09 | adscrubber.org |
| Ad Blocker Premium | 100k | 18 | **2026-09-21** | adblockerpremium.com |
| Best AdBlocker / AdBlocker Ultra / Giant / Expert… | each ~100k | dozens | 2025–2026 | each with its own single-page site |

These extensions link to each other in the store's "related extensions" (chromestore.related; the top 12 related extensions on Ad Blocker Pro's listing are almost all from the table above).

#### Who is related to whom (grouped by fingerprint, **not fully verified** )

- **Group B (same tech and legal template as Ad Blocker Pro)** : Ad Blocker Pro, Ad Blocker Premium, Ad Blocker Unlimited (possibly also All-In-One, Advanced). Basis: identical permission sets (alarms + webRequest + tabs + declarativeNetRequest); privacy policies match paragraph by paragraph, all saying "the installation ID is issued by the server", "sent back to `<domain>/stats/`", "the number of searches while the extension is on", and "visits to search results pages"; all domains are registered on Cloudflare, and **proadblocker.com and adblockerpremium.com were registered on the same day (2026-08-04)** . So it's likely one operator running several brands in rotation.

- **Group A** : Ad Block Ninja, Ad Block Ghost, Ad Block Wonder. Basis: identical permission sets (webNavigation, no webRequest); privacy policies all at `privacy.html`, all adapted from the AdBlock "donors / Acceptable Ads" template; ninja-block.com and adblockghost.com both registered at Hostinger.

- The recall card says Ninja and Pro are from the same developer; I **could not confirm this** : their email domains, registrars and privacy templates differ. On chrome-stats they only appear together as "similar extensions" recommendations, which doesn't prove common ownership. The safer wording is "two teams running the same playbook (or two skins of one team)".

### 4. Growth tactics (where users come from)

1. **Buys pop-up ads on streaming and piracy sites to drive installs** (evidence exists, moderate strength)
    - Ad Blocker Pro store reviews: Tom Davies (2026-10-18,42 people found it helpful) writes "constant pop-ups made me reinstall, they block the page content"; Fern (2026-10-24,22 people found it helpful) writes "does nothing, only gave me more ads and keeps making me reinstall" (chromewebstore reviews page). The two most-upvoted negative reviews are both about the install promotion tactics.
    - Similar case Ad Block Ninja: a FutureTechSpot 2026-07-10 review describes seeing a pop-up in the bottom-right corner of a movie piracy streaming site reading "Tired of this? Ad Block Ninja — free on Chrome"; a Reddit r/techsupport user posted that Chrome opened a new tab on every refresh, urging them to install "ad block ninja". Ninja's store description also explicitly targets "streaming, torrent, direct download" sites.
    - Malwarebytes 2024-11 wrote about exactly this playbook: affiliates running misleading ads on media sites to push ad-blocker / pop-up-blocker extensions.
    - The logic is clean: people annoyed by pop-ups are exactly the ones most eager to install an ad blocker, and the ad slots are cheap (pop-under and push traffic).

2. **Platform event: uBO delisted** (the timeline fits, but causation can't be proven directly)
    - 2026-08-04 registered the domain, 08-14 listed in the store, 08-31 uBO was removed from the store, and by that day it already had 100k users. It launched just two weeks before uBO's removal. After the removal, searches for "ad blocker" in the store spiked, and the new extension with the most generic name captured that search traffic.

3. **Store search and recommendation slots** (evidence exists)
    - Names stuffed with keywords: "Ad Blocker Pro - block ads ad blocker"; 30 store pages in multiple languages; currently #1 on Top Charts "Notable"; they cross-link in the related extensions section.

4. **Seeded reviews** (inferred)
    - The positive reviews are short and template-like: "Smooth streaming, no annoying ads.", "Sweet and fun", "great site", each marked helpful by 2–8 people, while the negative reviews collect far more helpful votes. There's no direct evidence of review manipulation, but a 0.023% rating held at 4.3 stars fits the pattern.

5. **Channels not observed** : this domain is absent from our Meta and Google ad libraries (the recall card's ads field is empty); X (x-radar) search returns nothing for proadblocker; no media coverage; TikTok search returned no relevant content. Not finding it doesn't mean it wasn't advertised.

### 5. Where the money comes from

- **Original text from Section 5.2 of the privacy policy of the similar Ad Block Wonder** : "you agree that we may display unobtrusive, text-based promoted links within third-party search engine results, specifically Google Search … We receive a portion of the advertising revenue … availability may vary depending on your geographical location." — **inserts promoted links into Google search results, earns a share of ad revenue per click, and varies by country** .

- Ninja's policy describes an "integrated, non-intrusive advertising ecosystem" and "Acceptable Ads".

- Ad Blocker Pro and the Group B sister sites don't describe monetization in their policies, but they specifically report "the number of searches while the extension is on" and "search results page visit times". Those are exactly the metrics needed to settle search monetization, so **it's likely the same search-results injection / search revenue share** (unverified; the extension code was not obtained). Also, "sending the domains of all open tabs on install and uninstall" could be used for paid acquisition attribution.

- Unit economics: pop-up installs billed per impression are cheap (commonly a few cents to a few tenths of a dollar each in the industry, **not verified** ); a user in the US, UK, Canada or Australia who searches dozens of times a month only needs a few clicks on promoted links to pay back. That's why it concentrates spend on high-value countries, and the countries where CrUX grows fastest are exactly these.

### 6. Why the website traffic is growing

proadblocker.com isn't a site users go to on purpose. Its Tranco and CrUX ranks mainly come from:

- Requests from the extension itself: install ID issuance, filter rule downloads, and reporting to /stats/ every few hours (DNS sources like Cloudflare Radar and Umbrella in Tranco count these);

- The welcome page after install, the retention page after uninstall, and the promotional landing pages, all pages actually opened in Chrome (counted in CrUX);

- So the ranking is basically a shadow of install numbers: installs went from 100k to 300k, and Tranco rose from 975k to 170k. **All the traffic comes from the extension; this product has no app** .

### 7. Differentiation

Almost none. Features, copy ("free forever", "no account", "54k rules"), and permissions are the same as a dozen competing extensions. There are two real differences:

1. **Timing** : it launched two weeks before uBO's removal, and already had 100k users on the day of removal, catching the wave of searches for alternatives;

2. **Ability to run clones at scale** : the same code and privacy template can be reskinned with a new name and new domain (proadblocker.com and adblockerpremium.com were registered on the same day), so when one brand is delisted or its reputation sours, the whole operation survives.

These two points explain why it worked, not the product itself.

### 8. Visibility and copycats

- **Little public awareness** : no media or big X accounts have covered it; the only results are data aggregators (chrome-stats, extwise's risk score of 58 "high", extscope, extension.vn) and scamadviser's low trust score. Revenue is not public.

- But the playbook itself is already crowded: there are more than a dozen similar extensions launched in 2025–2026 with over 100k users (see Section 3). Launched after it were Ad Block Ghost (08-23, 300k already) and Ad Blocker Premium (09-21, 100k already, very likely the same operator).

- Risk: the Chrome Web Store has a policy against "deceptive installation tactics" (the deceptive-installation-tactics FAQ on developer.chrome.com), and injecting content into search results also runs into "single purpose" and privacy rules. Extensions like this can be delisted in batches at any time, so operators have to keep launching new brands.

### 9. What others can learn

- Platform-event arbitrage: in the first few weeks after a big player is pushed out by platform rules (uBO and MV2), have a "generic name + compliant new architecture" alternative ready.

- Buy where the problem is: ad blocker ads run on the sites with the most aggressive pop-ups, where demand is strongest and traffic is cheapest.

- Tie monetization to a high-frequency behavior (search) rather than asking users to pay; keep it free and require no sign-up to minimize the install barrier.

- Make the brand disposable (same code + templated websites + several domains registered at once), spreading the risk of delisting.

- (Note: this playbook sits close to the store policy red lines; deceptive installation and search injection are common reasons for delisting.)

### 10. Still unclear

- Whether Ad Blocker Pro itself inserts promoted links into search results (requires the CRX code, or actually installing it and watching search pages to confirm);

- Whether it's the same operator as Ad Block Ninja (this round of evidence leans toward not the same skin); whether the Group B brands are one company, which is also only inferred from fingerprints;

- The specific ad networks and CPI rates used for paid acquisition;

- User retention: the user count keeps crossing new thresholds, but negative reviews complain "keeps making me reinstall", so many people may have installed and then uninstalled.

### Sources

- chromestore library: item / item_snap / extops_series / extops_item / related (2026-11-01~11-07)

- traffic library: rank_day (2026-09-10~11-05), crux_domain (2026-08, 09)

- [proadblocker.com/](https://proadblocker.com/), [proadblocker.com/privacy-policy/](https://proadblocker.com/privacy-policy/), [proadblocker.com/faq/](https://proadblocker.com/faq/)

- [chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ad-blocker-pro-block-ads/ni…](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ad-blocker-pro-block-ads/nigoagcimgiifniljaedijgilbfdplbb/reviews)

- [chromewebstore.google.com/top-charts/notable](https://chromewebstore.google.com/top-charts/notable) (2026-11-07 crawl, #1)

- [wonderadblock.com/privacy.html](https://wonderadblock.com/privacy.html) (5.2 Monetization), [ninja-block.com/privacy-policy.html](https://ninja-block.com/privacy-policy.html), [adblockerpremium.com/privacy/](https://adblockerpremium.com/privacy/), [adblockerunlimited.com/privacypolicy/](https://adblockerunlimited.com/privacypolicy/)

- [futuretechspot.info/ad-block-ninja-review/](https://futuretechspot.info/ad-block-ninja-review/)(2026-07-10)

- [www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1v6rsu0/](https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1v6rsu0/) (search snippet)

- [www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/11/advertisers-are-pushi…](https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/11/advertisers-are-pushing-ad-and-pop-up-blockers-using-old-tricks)

- [cyberinsider.com/google-removes-ublock-origin-from-chrome-we…](https://cyberinsider.com/google-removes-ublock-origin-from-chrome-web-store-in-final-manifest-v2-purge/), [ublockorigin.com/chrome/](https://ublockorigin.com/chrome/)

- RDAP (rdap.verisign.com): proadblocker.com 2026-08-04, adblockerpremium.com 2026-08-04, ninja-block.com 2026-05-01, adblockghost.com 2026-07-09, proadblocker.net 2026-08-17

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.