Meter Limit Circumvention by Users

$100K - $600K annually (lower CPM rates, lost premium sponsorship deals, reduced ability to command premium ad inventory pricing) • $100K-$1M potential GDPR/CCPA fines if aggressive tracking is deemed non-compliant; simultaneous $300K-$2M in lost subscription revenue from unblocked bypass activity • $100K-$500K annually (direct: 58% of potential subscriber base bypasses = 0.5-3% conversion loss on high-value direct consumer segment; multiplied across annual LTV)

Ad Sales manually cross-references Pigeon/paywall reports with Google Ad Manager data using custom CSV exports; reconciliation happens in Excel with email back-and-forths with analytics team • Each function works around the leaky meter differently: Legal/Compliance relies on contract language and manual audits of usage logs exported from paywall/vendor systems; Social Media Distribution Manager informally caps or adjusts the mix of free vs. premium links shared to avoid ‘overexposure’, tracking which URLs are behind the meter in spreadsheets and link shorteners; Data Privacy Officer pushes for stricter login, fingerprinting, or SSO rules but often pilots these controls in siloed tools without full integration to paywall logic. • EIC tracks institutional access separately via manual user lists provided by institutions; assumes meter doesn't apply; bypasses are treated as 'not our problem' since institutions paid flat fee