You May Love Apple Products ... but Apple Doesn't Love You (10)
You May Love Apple Products ... but Apple Doesn't Love You
This could strike a massive blow to all advertisers and affiliates running traffic if it becomes adopted .... is it maybe time to rethink all the love (and cash) affiliates give to iPhones and Macs?
A blow for mobile advertising: The next version of Safari will let users block ads on iPhones and iPads
Harvard University Niemann Center Labs
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/06/a-b...nes-and-ipads/
Think making money on mobile advertising is hard now? Think how much more difficult it will be with a significant share of your audience is blocking all your ads — all with a simple download from the App Store.
It didn’t get a mention in Apple’s big keynote announcements Monday — which already had plenty of interest to publishers — but deep within Apple’s developer documentation lies perhaps the most important item of all to the news industry.
Adblocking is coming to the iPhone with iOS 9.
Adblocking — running a piece of software in your web browser that prevents ads on most web pages from loading — has moved from a niche behavior for the nerdy few to something mainstream. A report from 2014 found that adblock usage was up 70 percent year-over-year, with over 140 million people blocking ads worldwide, including 41 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds. You can understand why that would be troubling to the publishers who sell those ads. But until now, adblocking has been limited almost entirely to desktop — mobile browsers haven’t allowed it.
Here’s how the developer documentation puts the new change, coming in iOS 9:
The new Safari release brings Content Blocking Safari Extensions to iOS. Content Blocking gives your extensions a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content.
Your app extension is responsible for supplying a JSON file to Safari. The JSON consists of an array of rules (triggers and actions) for blocking specified content. Safari converts the JSON to bytecode, which it applies efficiently to all resource loads without leaking information about the user’s browsing back to the app extension.
Xcode includes a Content Blocker App Extension template that contains code to send your JSON file to Safari. Just edit the JSON file in the template to provide your own triggers and actions. The sample JSON file below contains triggers and actions that block images on webkit.org.
What this means is, when iOS 9 launches in the fall, you’ll be able to go to the App Store and download an extension that will block ads on most news sites.
Is there any chance that won’t be incredibly popular? The desktop version of Safari currently allows a variety of custom extensions, and what’s the most popular? Hint: It’s called AdBlock.
For me, the arguments for using ad blockers range from the unconvincing (dude, information wants to be free) to the reasonable (I don’t need dozens of tracking beacons on every webpage) to the downright understandable (poorly built ads slow my browser to a crawl). I don’t use an ad blocker, but I do block all Flash by default for performance reasons, which accomplishes some of the same ends. The best arguments for adblocking are even stronger on mobile than they are on desktop — bandwidth and performance and battery life are all at a premium.
This is worrisome. Publishers already make tiny dollars on mobile, even as their readers have shifted there in huge numbers. To take one example, The New York Times has more than 50 percent of its digital audience on mobile, but generates only 10 percent of its digital advertising revenue there. Most news outlets aren’t even at that low level.
If iOS users — the majority of mobile web users in the U.S., and disproportionately appealing demographically — can suddenly block all your ads with a simple free download, where is the growth going to come from? (By the way, a version of Adblock Plus for Android just came out a couple weeks ago, though it appears to be more limited than what Apple is allowing.)
The folks behind Adblock Plus — a different ad blocker from AdBlock; it’s a confusing space — aren’t sure they like the way Apple’s allowing it, saying it might make certain adblocking methods harder to implement on the desktop version of Safari. But desktop Safari is small potatoes compared to the web browser on every iPhone and every iPad, where it was impossible to write ad blockers before now.
The potential impact of “Content Blocking Safari Extensions” even goes beyond blocked ads. Apple is explicitly allowing the blocking of cookies on a site-by-site basis. For example, you could build an extension that blocked the cookies that allow a newspaper paywall to work. The Yourtown Times allows you 10 stories free a month? It’s probably using a cookie to keep track of that count. Block that cookie and the paywall comes tumbling down — you’re a fresh visitor every time. Imagine being able to download an extension that blocked paywall cookies on the top 50 paid news sites. It wouldn’t even be particularly hard to code; unless Apple chooses to prevent it, someone will do it. News sites would be able to build workarounds — changing cookie IDs regularly, requiring user login from article 1 — but winning that sort of cat-and-mouse game is something publishers are unlikely to be good at.
Why would Apple do this?
An Apple partisan might argue it just wants to give users control of their iPhone experience, and having debuted extensions in the last version of iOS, allowing them to alter web content is a natural next step.
An Apple realist might argue that its great rival Google makes more than 90 percent of its revenue from online advertising — a growing share of that on mobile, and a large share of that on iPhone. Indeed, Google alone makes about half of all global mobile advertising revenue. So anything that cuts back on mobile advertising revenue is primarily hurting its rival. (Google has been less friendly to adblockers than its “open” positioning would suggest.)
An Apple cynic might note that the company on Monday unveiled its new News app, which promises a beautiful reading experience — and a monetization model based on Apple’s iAds. iAds will, one can assume, never be blockable by third-party extensions available in the App Store. Ads that appear at the operating system level — as opposed to in HTML and JavaScript on a web page — have a rather invulnerable position so long as you keep using Apple products. (It’s good to be the platform.)
Maybe I’m exaggerating the potential impact here. (Talk me down!) Maybe people won’t download the free app at the top of the Most Downloaded list that promises to make their websites load more quickly, more beautifully, and using less data. But use of ad blockers has done nothing but rise, particularly among young users, and people are about to be given an easy way to do on the devices they use most. For the many news companies who are counting on mobile advertising for their future business model, I don’t see a way that this change won’t shave off a real slice of mobile advertising revenue.
I don't think it really matters. Those that download those extensions aren't likely to respond to ads anyway.
Agree with ocean25, what I see with that update is insane CTRs and CVs since majority of waste traffic that never clicks or pays attention to ads will be eliminated, so we would have access to a smaller number of customers, but these will be a 'premium', high converting customers.
The irony here is that a number of these adblocking apps will probably be available as offers at CPA networks to be promoted by affiliates. Talk about cannibalism!
so is this why the current ios performance sucks so bad compared to android? or is it just me...
that's really interesting. does it block all ads? like facebook news feed ads? word with friends interstitials?
is this good bye for all free apps in the apple store?
there are a lot of billion dollar companies that are completely reliant on in app ads. all right maybe not alot. but some.
I can't imagine there won't be a lot of holes in this blocker.
approved advertiser white lists
http://www.businessinsider.com/googl...its-ads-2013-8
I'm trying to find some sort of detailed stats on the effects of desktop ad blockers on advertiser revenues. but i can't. does anyone have references?
i wonder if there is data to back up the argument stated above "I don't think it really matters. Those that download those extensions aren't likely to respond to ads anyway."
i'm sure there has been an immense amount of analysis done in the last 5 years on desktops ads.
Originally Posted by xavierfok
Not worried at all.
Advertising as we know it today will probably "die" some time anyway. Banner ads, sponsored feed messages, paid search listings etc–who knows if or when they all will be blocked or cease to exist.
The fact is that the world will always consist of:
1 Consumers
2 Advertisers
Nature will find a way. No matter what Apple or anyone does to put spokes in our wheels there will emerge new and clever ways for us to reach out to potential customers. Unless the world soon faces a totalitaristic dystopic future I personally think AdBlock and the likes are healthy counters that should force us to be more innovative.
If indeed Apple are trying to push iAds this way (which seems quite feasible to me), I'm wondering if they ever run into anti-trust issues like the ones Google and Microsoft have had in Europe for example.
Agree - it doesn’t matter all that much.
It allows to build an ad blocking extension for Safari. So it’s just ad blocking in the Safari browser. Not inside apps (which is where most people are anyway).
If news companies are concerned then they should pull their users out of the browser and into an app. They should have done that a long time ago. Maybe Apple is trying to tell them that, in their own typical way.
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