Apple’s mobile ad blocking will hasten the death of online advertising

Apple is set to launch a new offensive in the ongoing battle against online advertising. The latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 9, will include ad-blocking capabilities for Safari, its mobile web browser.

A study by Adobe and PageFair, a pro-advertising firm, has revealed that the widespread adoption of ad-blocking extensions in desktop web browsers has resulted in a staggering US$22 billion in lost revenue for websites that rely on ads.

A recent report has revealed that the number of people using ad-blocking software has grown to an estimated 198 million users worldwide. 400 users were surveyed by the authors of the report, and the primary reasons for using ad-blocking software were to protect their privacy from targeted advertising and to limit the number of ads they encountered while browsing.As web sites increasingly struggle to make money through online advertising, the practice of trying to guilt users into switching off their ad-blocking software is proving to be ineffective. Consequently, the display of messages to ad-blocking users by web sites has diminished.

The imminent arrival of ad-blocking apps for Safari on iOS 9 is likely to further reduce the effectiveness of web site advertising. Already available to beta testers, one such app, Crystal, not only blocks ads but also significantly speeds up web page loading times by four times, resulting in a significant reduction in data usage on mobile devices.

Another ad-blocking app Purify which is also in beta testing appears to also block ads on YouTube.

They standout, and that’s precisely why so many people block them. Pascale Kinchen Douglas/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Ad blocking on mobile is not completely new

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