Many companies are now offering native ad blocking features in their web browsers and Opera followed suit earlier this year. Native ad blocking went live in Opera back in March this year. A couple of months later the feature was also enabled in Opera Mini for Android. The company has now confirmed that native ad blocking is now enabled in its browser on all mobile platforms, this includes Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.
Ad blocking is gaining steam and even though that worries legitimate publishers, countless tools have been released that allow people to easily block all ads online.
Yes it protects users against ads that might spread malware and it understandably speeds up page load times, but publishers depend upon ad revenue to create content, and if there’s no revenue then they can’t surprise.
The ethical and moral aspect of this debate aside, the fact is that ad blocking is here now and it’s here to stay. This feature isn’t enabled by default on Opera’s mobile browser. Users will have to go into the Settings menu first followed by Data Savings to tap on the “Block Ads” box. Once the feature is enabled it’s going to block any and all ads online.
The feature is now live on Opera for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.