Case Study: L’Étudiant boosts adblock disabling by 179% and improves visitor retention with Kameleoon

L'Etudiant increases ad blocker deactivations by 179% with a pop-in

L’Étudiant.fr, the leading French media group for students (ages 15–25) with millions of monthly visitors, faced widespread adblocking—about 24% of users—which reduced ad impressions and threatened its ad-funded, free-content model. The site's goal was to raise awareness of adblocks' impact and increase the rate of visitors disabling their adblockers while maintaining visitor retention.

They ran a desktop A/B test with ~5 million visitors: Variation A (no message) vs Variation B (a pop-in explaining that ads fund free, high-quality content and asking users to disable adblock). The pop-in was implemented in half a day and rolled out site-wide after the test produced a 179% increase in users disabling adblocks and a 7% improvement in visitor retention (longer sessions and more pages viewed).

L’Etudiant

Virginie De Montard

Audience Acquisition and Marketing Manager