WHY USE AN ADVERTISING AND TRACKING NETWORKS BLOCK LIST WITH LIMITED NUMBER OF RULES? 

In advertising the number one (Google) has a marketshare of around 40 percent, Facebook the number two hits the 20% mark while the number three (Comscore) just has a little over 2.5% marketshare. For comparison Amazon with its huge webstore generates about the same advertising traffic on its own website.

A study performed by Brave browser (https://brave.com/the-mounting-cost-of-stale-ad-blocking-rules/) seems to support above claim: QUOTE "WE FOUND THAT ONLY 201 RULES ACCOUNTED FOR 90% OF THE BLOCKING ACTIVITY". Also the usage data of W3tech shows simular results, see https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/advertising or https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/traffic_analysis

                                              LOW UPDATE FREQUENCY

This list focusses on the advertising and tracking networks which place the adds on the websites you visit. It is therefore not subjective to a lot of changes for two reasons. First: it takes a lot of time and money to build such a backbone (ad serving) network. Because the market is more or less saturated, the chance of a new adnetwork entering this market is very low. Second: the digital marketeers using these networks are a constraining factor. Because most people don't like to learn how to use new software, human reluctance to change is the second constraining factor for new adnetworks to popup.

                                                      SOURCES

The blocklists are based on surveys of most used advertising and tracking technology (e.g. surveys of W3C, W3Tech and the digital marketing community itself). The online advertising industry likes to keep lists of top performing companies in the ad supply chain (including advertising exchange platforms). The list and surveys monitored are oriented on Europe and North America, this is the reason the slim Mv3 blocklist contains mostly EU and US based advertising and tracking networks.

                                                  SUGGESTED USE

I normally use the EU-US-most used filter in combination with my extension's own (english) adblocking filter to reduce the number of rules in combination with a country/language specific filter (from Easylist or AdGuard)

                                                  ERRORS & ISSUES

Please report site breakage on https://github.com/Kees1958/W3C_annual_most_used_survey_blocklist/issues I will try to correct errors as soon as possible.