For Jeremiah Grossman it may be "GAME OVER. Ad-Tech Wins" at 'Step 18' but it's certainly not so if both the Ad Blocker and user wish to continue the war, but it does mean upping the ante somewhat.

Blocking ads would be achieved by modifying the contents of Web pages after they leave the browser but before they're displayed on screen. Modifying data/video content after the browser has processed it means that it can be effectively isolated from the underlying code. As DOM and JavaScript will not be able to detect changes, there's huge scope for changing the way web pages are displayed without content providers being any the wiser of the fact.

Moreover, isolating changes from the browser would also permit false/random/junk data to be fed back to the browser without detection (i.e.: a dummy user seemingly responding to the ads in a random or nefarious way). Clearly, widespread deployment of such useless data would render ad statistics useless.

Let's examine some of technologies already available to Ad Blockers and users to block ads albeit if for the moment they are not being used for that purpose. They could be used individually or together or even in combination with sophisticated programs that use kernel-based drivers to further thwart browser-originating ads, threats, etc.

1. Use Secure Screen technology similar to that used by PGP decades ago to secure the viewing of email messages. Here the on-screen message is bit mapped into obfuscation to all players except the reader who views the message in the form of an image rather than it being generated from actual ASCII or Unicode characters.

2. Similarly, webpage data intercepted from the browser can be monitored using AI techniques which learn to recognize ads then block them automatically. Precision would be improved if done in conjunction with the Ad Blocker's remote blacklist servers. (Remember, your smartphone's facial recognition software is good enough now to recognize your face, thus similar code ought to be smart enough to recognize ads and to learn about changes in their content, deployment, placement, etc.)

(It seems to me that such a back-end AI scheme would be ideal to thwart the recent changes to Facebook where ads are being integrated into the content structure so as to fool ad blockers. Whilst the new ads will be indistinguishable from content to traditional ad blockers AI will recognize them easily.)

3. These techniques could or would be used in conjunction with the video Overlay mode as used by most graphics cards for movies. (You may recall that when the vector/overlay mode is used for movies then essentially moving images are isolated from the rest of the screen (effectively they cannot be seen by other programs). It's the reason why Print Screen when used to capture still frames of movie scenes end up as blank images, this isolation could be used to the Ad Blocker's advantage.

To thwart or bypass ad-removing code running externally to an effectively 'sandboxed' browser would require the complicit involvement of both the O/S suppliers and hardware manufacturers. If this were ever to happen then the ad wars will have entered a new dimension altogether, then we'll have entered an Orwellian world where ad viewing was compulsory through legislation.

[No matter how website/content providers escalate the war to force users to view ads, ultimately users will always be able to gain the upper hand with sufficient effort—after all they are in control what they see. Content providers can and do make things inconvenient but technology will always win out in favor of users (and it gets easier over time). For example HDMI was introduced to stop recording of 2k HD images but as 4k video becomes ubiquitous so do 4k telecine [camera] video recordings of screens, thus now 2k HDMI content can be recorded with almost no degradation: almost by definition the Law of Diminishing Returns ultimately favors users.]

BTW, it doesn't require much extension of thought to envisage similar techniques being used to remove TV ads. Here, TVs/PVRs would remove ads on-the-fly from recordings made for time-shifted viewings/replays: one allows for ads to be removed by delaying the time one sits down to an evening's viewing by the collective duration of all ads. Using AI would not only effectively remove all ads but also it could eliminate other annoyances such as the incessant news-breaks so frequently inserted into the middle of programs.