iOS: what has actually become of Adblockers?

With iOS 9 Apple introduced the possibility to use Adblocker on the mobile devices from Cupertino. In the meantime iOS 9.2 has been released and the coverage around iOS-Adblocker has become quieter. Time to take another look at the topic.

For a long time, mobile iOS devices were one of the last bastions where adblocking was not possible. With iOS 9 this has changed, Apple now allows apps for mobile devices. These are integrated directly into Safari and filter the websites you visit.

After the introduction with iOS 9.0 there was first an outcry among site operators, who feared that advertising revenues on mobile websites would now collapse. Since then, a few months have passed - and things have become much quieter around the iOS ad blockers. Updates of the apps themselves are relatively rare, in the beginning "hyped" apps like 1Blockr or Purify have not been updated for more than a month (the filter lists of course have been updated, but not the basic apps).

So far the iOS-Adblocker not to have a negative effect on mobile web offers in particular - on the other hand, adblockers are generally more criticized, which has been proven in various court cases against the Adblock Plus manufacturer Eyeo shows. Also the adblockers for iOS 9 partly support the "acceptable ads" introduced with Adblock Plus. According to various sources, app providers receive a sum of money from Eyeo GmbH for the use of the corresponding list.

In general it remains interesting to see how the Adblocker for iOSwhere a target group with particularly high purchasing power is suspected. The large advertising networks in particular will try to develop appropriate "countermeasures" and deliver advertising despite the filter techniques. Apple itself is likely to hope that its own iAds system will be increasingly used. These ads are of course excluded from the ad blocking mechanism in iOS 9.