Apple’s revelation at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference made all mobile advertising publishers sit up and take notice, their undivided attention was demanded by Apple’s announcement of powerful ad blocking browser extensions introduced as part of their native Safari browser that comes loaded with the company’s new iOS 9. The potential future calamity for ad publishers first surfaced a week ago when developers uncovered the Apple provision in their technical documentation released after the introduction of iOS 9 at WDC 2015.
IPhone users have never been offered the option to completely block any and all digital advertising in its native browser before, the functionality was only available to them via browsers other than Safari. The news caused serious concern within the publishing industry since about 55% of Apple users continue using the native Safari browser to access all their web content. Josh Brenton, Nieman Journalism Lab Director at Harvard University, expressed his concern stating that it was worrisome since publishers already earned tiny dollars from mobile, since most of their readers moved to its digital news format in massive numbers. Considering that over 50% of the New York Times on-line subscribers would access this publication using one form or another of mobile device. However, current quantities and forms of mobile digital advertising only generate 10% of the news agency’s revenue from digital advertising.
The new-found iPhone user control over digital advertising could purportedly be debilitating to digital publishers. With the common response from within the digital advertising community being that the Safari ad blocker support comes as terrible news not just for advertisers, but also includes media and publishing organisations according to John Carroll, Prof of mass media communications at Boston University. Apple’s support whereby they allow their own developers to extend user control to its current extent allows Apple to tap into very popular current trends, but Apple’s motives might just involve its drive to become less dependent on Google.