When iOS 9 was announced, it was discovered that within Safari, Apple has allowed developers to create apps that could potentially block certain types of content from being displayed, such as ads, although we can only imagine the feature was probably designed to block potentially harmful media.
Unsurprisingly in a report from The Wall Street Journal, publishers aren’t too happy about the feature. Given how many iPhone owners there are in the world, implementing this feature could dramatically reduce the number of eyeballs looking at ads, which at the moment is estimated to be a $70 billion a year business.
According to Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, which is an association of digital publishers, “The ad-blocking problem is real and growing, and ad-blocking on iOS is only going to accelerate it.” Recent figures have shown that ad blocking has increased by as much as 41% and has already cost publishers billions of dollars.
While Android phones can be rooted to install ad blockers, the general concern here is that by enabling it on iOS, it could take ad blocking to the mainstream. Are these fears founded? From what we can tell there is genuine cause for concern, but whether or not iOS users are quick to adopt ad blocking apps remains to be seen.