Ad-Shield's certification partnership with Google announced Tuesday should enable publishers to gain higher dark traffic monetization.

The partnership allows publishers to monetize premium Google Ad Exchange (AdX) demand to reclaim access to lost inventory and ad revenue from the estimated 700 million consumers globally using a new generation of aggressive ad blockers - known as 'brutal adblockers' - that cause dark traffic.

Ad-Shield co-founder and CSO Dustin Cha believes that just a few years ago this partnership would not have been feasible.

"It wasn't technically feasible, and ad blocked inventory had a worthless reputation," Cha said. "A premium demand partner wouldn't have touched it."

Google's Multiple Customer Management (MCM), a feature in Google Ad Manager, allows publishers to manage ad inventory and accounts. These partners are third-party ad-tech companies that are required to meet Google's quality requirements for ad-fraud protection, copyright infringement, and account violations.

Eligibility to Google's MCM program requires Google to verify the company's website. It cannot have copyright infringement violations or promotion of sensitive content such as violence, gambling or adult material on its website. It also must have reliable protection against ad fraud and have a valid ads.txt file on the company's website.

Supporting these efforts with Google, Ad-Shield developers have created an internal ad standard -- Allowable Ads -- that Cha believes is more rigorous than the advertising industry's Better Ads Standard guidelines to ensure that advertisements served are user-friendly, respectful of consumer preferences, and aligned with long-term goals of supporting a healthy open web.

Cha said dark traffic is too big of a problem to ignore and that Google now sees opportunities for publishers.

Dark traffic refers to the more than 70% of ad blocked page views not compatible with traditional recovery products like Acceptable Ads or ad-block walls. The audience of 700 million users globally has historically been inaccessible to publishers to measure and monetize.

The partnership is about publishers monetizing lost inventory. Publishers can continue using their current ad stack, or they can use Ad-Shield's programmatic demand through AdX as an option.

Google's MCM certification intends to provide publishers with access to dark traffic to "reclaim" the 14% to 21% of revenue typically lost, with revenue per mile (RPMs) ranging between $1and $3 depending on the publisher's audience.