The core target for the title were 25-34, male, hardcore sci-fi fans, early adopters and tech enthusiasts. But most importantly, they are hard to impress, extremely discerning and the most difficult to reach with advertising. In fact, more than 2/3 of the audience had ad blockers installed on one or more devices.

Our first-to-market idea was to reach this unreachable audience with a media hack that enabled us to circumvent ad blocking software. We worked with three of our target’s most revered destinations to hardcode a message directly into their CMS that was exclusively targeted to ad blockers, conveying an ominous message that evoked a feeling as unsettling as the show. The placement itself appeared as part of the sites’ content vs. being served in an existing ad placement.

We revisited the building blocks of the Internet and worked with these three websites to build our content directly into their CMS so it wouldn’t be flagged by ad blockers when the page loaded. The result was a piece of native content with 100% Share of voice against users with ad blockers that read “Hey Adblocker user, you cannot see the ad, but the ad can see you. What’s on the other side of your Black Mirror?”

The content appeared on the homepage and article pages of each website (Mashable, TheNextWeb and Slate) across desktop and mobile for two weeks beginning on October 21. We secured a total of 700k impressions targeted exclusively to ad-blockers across the three sites.

Social conversation was a testament of our success in creating a moment of joy for these discerning advertising haters, who instantly flocked to social media to share their love for the Black Mirror ads.

Our efforts culminated in more than 1MM posts about the series, 30x more conversation than season two. Season three also garnered 5x more search volume than season two, providing explicit data people were intrigued and wanted to know more.

Additionally, more than 20 sites globally covered the ad blocking campaign because of its surprising and unsettling effect—not just in media and marketing publications but also in consumer facing sites, directly creating pop culture relevancy and a tremendous amount of earned media.

Finally, Black Mirror season three made it into the top 15 most streamed original shows of 2016 (Source: Symphony Advanced Media)