Technology Spotlight
A conversation with Joy Dean, VP, Marketing and Partnerships, Europe at Optima brought to you by Ultimate Asset.
“Publishers must prioritize sustainable, privacy-compliant monetization strategies”
What is Optima’s elevator pitch?
Optima is a leading independent ad block recovery platform which seamlessly restores lost inventory for publishers, unlocking significant incremental revenue for those hard to reach users our premium advertiser wants to reach, while maintaining a high level user experience.
What business problem is Optima solving?
The business problem Optima is solving is the growing loss in advertising revenue and reduced campaign performance due to the rise of ad blocker usage—particularly in the UK, where nearly 40% of internet users block ads, according to Statista.
This trend significantly impacts publishers, platforms, and advertisers. Globally, ad blocking is projected to cost publishers $54 billion in 2024 (about 10% of overall global revenue) as users demand faster load times, better privacy, and less intrusive content. For advertisers, it means shrinking reach, distorted measurement, and less effective targeting. For publishers, it creates a monetization gap that’s increasingly difficult to close with traditional ad formats.
Optima’s ad block monetization product addresses this challenge by helping publishers recover lost impressions and revenue—without compromising user trust. Our solution delivers a single, high-quality ad placement under the Acceptable Ads protocol, which ensures that the experience is respectful, non-intrusive, and aligned with user expectations.
By serving unblocked, standards-compliant ads to audiences who have chosen to allow lighter advertising, Optima enables publishers to sustainably monetize previously unreachable users. This approach supports both content funding and campaign performance, while maintaining the privacy and speed benefits that led users to install ad blockers in the first place.
In a landscape where privacy and user experience are critical, Optima transforms ad blocking from a barrier into a new stream of incremental revenue.
What sets Optima apart from competitors? What is your unique selling proposition?
Optima stands out by offering a seamless, privacy-compliant ad block recovery solution that prioritizes both user experience and publisher revenue. Unlike disruptive reinsertion methods or pop-ups that risk user trust, we deliver a single, high-quality ad placement under the restoring lost impressions without frustration or friction.
We have built one of the most advanced monetization layers for Adblock traffic in the industry, and we are constantly evolving it to ensure maximum coverage and demand depth. Based on our internal data and testing across thousands of placements, we are recovering.
In total, we can recover and serve ads to over 90% of typical Adblock users, thanks to advanced obfuscation techniques, script-level dynamic rendering, and our continuous to blocklist updates. What makes us different is not just our coverage – it’s our ability to monetize with a single, lightweight ad unit, placed strategically, with our own demand stack that pays extremely competitive CPMs. This setup gives them a strong revenue uplift without compromising UX or needing to manage complex tag configurations.
Who is your primary target audience? What are their needs and pain points?
Optima serves publishers with high ad block traffic, including major media outlets, news sites, entertainment platforms, gaming publishers, and ad-supported streaming services. These publishers rely on advertising as a primary revenue source but face significant losses due to ad blockers, reducing their ability to monetize engaged audiences. Their key pain points include declining ad revenue, decreased inventory availability, unpredictability in earnings, and user experience concerns when attempting to bypass ad blockers. They need a seamless, user-friendly solution that restores lost revenue without disrupting site performance or violating privacy regulations.
How does Optima solve these need states of the audience and fill the gap in the market? What is the value you bring to them?
Many existing ad recovery solutions are easily bypassed, non-compliant with privacy regulations, or degrade site performance.
Optima isn’t just about recovering lost revenue—it’s about turning ad-blocked traffic into a new, predictable, and premium monetization channel. We help publishers regain control, optimize their ad strategy, and future-proof their business. With Optima, lost impressions become newfound revenue.
- Seamless Ad Recovery – Our proprietary technology restores lost inventory without disrupting user experience, ensuring smooth, high-quality ad delivery.
- Incremental Revenue Growth – By unlocking previously inaccessible impressions, publishers see significant revenue uplift without additional traffic acquisition costs.
- AI-Driven Optimization – Our platform analyzes and adapts to ad-blocking trends in real time, maximizing fill rates and ensuring premium CPMs.
- Privacy & Compliance First – Unlike intrusive solutions, Optima operates within global privacy regulations (Acceptable Ads), giving publishers a future-proof monetization strategy.
- Predictable & Scalable Revenue – With Optima, publishers can forecast and stabilize their ad revenue, reducing volatility and improving long-term profitability.
Describe Optima’s company culture.
Outside our Barcelona HQ, where the financial teams are based, the remainder of the sales and business development at Optima are fully remote. Being fully remote isn’t just about flexibility—it’s about building a diverse, dynamic, and globally connected culture. Our team spans continents, bringing together talented minds from different backgrounds, time zones, and cultures, fostering innovation through fresh perspectives. Without borders, we attract top-tier talent while empowering our team to work where they thrive best—whether it’s sunny LA, grey clouds in historic London, or a home office in New York. Remote work means better work-life balance, increased productivity, and a culture of trust and ownership. At Optima, we don’t just work remotely—we collaborate, celebrate, and grow together, no matter where we are in the world.
What are the most common misconceptions about Optima or sector within technology?
- Ad block recovery means forcing ads on users.
Many assume that ad recovery is just about circumventing blockers aggressively, but Optima prioritizes user experience, ensuring ads are non-intrusive, high quality, and compliant with privacy regulations.
- All ad block recovery solutions are the same.
Some believe any recovery tool will do the job, but many existing solutions are ineffective, easily blocked again, don’t cover all ad blocker, or degrade site performance. Optima’s AI-powered approach adapts in real-time, making it more sustainable and resilient.
- Ad blocking only affects small parts of publisher revenue.
The reality? Publishers lose billions annually to ad blockers—it’s not just a minor issue. Optima helps reclaim a significant portion of lost revenue, turning ad-blocked impressions into new monetization opportunities.
- Users who block ads will never engage with them – Not true!
Many users block ads due to poor ad experiences, not because they hate all ads. By delivering less intrusive, high-quality, and relevant ads, Optima restores trust and engagement.
- Recovering ad revenue means violating user privacy.
Wrong. Optima operates within GDPR, CCPA, Acceptable Ads privacy laws, ensuring a compliant, ethical approach to monetization. Unlike black-hat methods, we focus on sustainability and transparency.
What are your predictions for the remainder of this year?
2025 will be the year of smarter, privacy-first ad recovery strategies, and publishers who adopt AI-driven, user-friendly, and regulation-compliant solutions like Optima will be the ones winning back lost revenue and future-proofing their business. (Check our Optima Director of Publisher Partnerships write up on Trends in the space HERE).
One statement, piece of advice that the industry should be thinking about this year?
Publishers must prioritize sustainable, privacy-compliant monetization strategies—ad recovery isn’t just about reclaiming revenue, it’s about rebuilding trust with users through smarter, more engaging, and less intrusive advertising.
A conversation with Joy Dean, VP, Marketing and Partnerships, Europe at Optima
Technology spotlight is a series brought you by the team at Ultimate Asset. Our aim is to highlight brilliant technology across the advertising & marketing industries. From their elevator pitch, to the problem they are trying to solve, we hope you can take something new away from each interview. With over 50,000 new technology businesses incorporated in the UK each year, there will be something for everybody.
Ultimate Asset are a boutique global digital recruitment consultancy, specialisting in hires in adtech, martech, media owners, brands and media agencies. With over 20 years of recruitment heritage in media, we support businesses across the UK, Europe, Asia & North America.
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Alex Swain, Managing Director via Alex@ultimateasset.com
