A good ad blocker would be one that will still load the page as intended but not display the ads. There would be no way for the site to know you can’t see them. Blocking their activation just signals the site that you are using an adblocker.
Edit: I was thinking more of a VM sandbox like another comment said
A good ad blocker would be one that will still load the page as intended
One could make a strong argument that the creators of the page intended the page to show ads.
If you want to block them, that’s fine with me, but arguing that not displaying ads is the intended experience of the page is just incorrect.
I think he means that a good adblocker should load the page as intended with the ads and then simply discard them before rendering the page.
That would be rendering potentially malicious code in the ad.
Sandbox them
Sandbox the ads. Trick them into thinking the playback is finished. If there is a timer that prevents skipping, modify timing calls to shorten the duration. Or execute faster than real-time.
If there is some kind of timer callback to server, it would even be preferable to have ad “running” invisibly with a progress bar and no ad.
That is really what I was thinking of