Apple adds ad blocking ability to all devices: publishers panic

The WSJ reports that "Apple Inc.’s move to make it easier to block ads on iPhones and iPads is troubling publishers and heightening tensions with its Silicon Valley neighbors." If you think that sunds serious, it's because it is. Mobile advertising have been the sole source of income for some publishers for quite some time, not as easily ad blocked as web pages viewed on computers are. Meanwhile, consumers are spending more of their digital time on their phones and their tablets, reached by ads seen in Safari browser and apps used. Limited ad block options exist for both iOS and Android, but this is the first tile that Apple is giving the idea its blessing and updated iOS 9 to allow blocking of ads straight in Safari.

While publishers fret all over the web, this looks more like a direct attack on Google, who have most of its revenue from advertising, still. Despite joining the hardware game, Google is still the worlds largest advertising company, and if Apple blocks googles ads, that's got to hurt. Apple will also benefit from driving consumers to their news app, where they get a cut of the ad revenue.

Cheatsheet explains in "Why blocking benefits only Apple";

Williams notes that we still aren’t sure exactly what Apple will permit in the App Store, and it’ll be interesting to see whether policies allow full-featured ad blockers like Crystal or simpler tracking blockers like Disconnect. But it’s likely that Apple will allow full content blockers, because it stands to directly benefit by doing so. Making ad-blocking ubiquitous on iOS will force publishers toward iOS 9’s News app, where users can’t block ads and Apple gets a cut of the advertising placed via its iAd network. Publishers who don’t choose to be a part of the News app will have to build their own native apps and, again, use iAd to monetize their content.

Eric Griffith reported earlier this summer for PC Mag that in the closed system that is iOS, ads placed with Apple’s iAd will never be blockable. That’s because iAd doesn’t place ads in the browser, but in iOS apps, where content-blocking apps that would try to interfere with them “1) wouldn’t work because they wouldn’t be targetable with JSON files or via protocols like https, and 2) if it did work, Apple would ban it.”