How to Block Ads on iOS

It’s not as easy at it seems.

You’ve seen these bumper blockers. Our license plate numbers cannot be protected like our browsing habits. Photo by Nicolas Mirguet. Licensed by Creative Commons.

Adoption of Content Blockers peaked and dipped after the initial hype cycle of Apple’s iOS9 release this September. Adobe can’t even find adoption evidence in its massive traffic data set. Analytic services suggest adoption is less than 1% or around 2 million users at this time. While adoption is low, traction of more than a million users after one quarter would be fairly respectable for an angel investor funded startup, so this shouldn’t be so easily dismissed, especially relative to desktop-based adblocking which has been around for at least a decade.

But is mobile adblocking easy to use? No. Not really.

Explanations for this relatively low adoption rate include:

• Limited availability of free Content Blockers: They exist but never charted on the App Store and aren’t promoted by Apple which is an important discovery mechanic for mainstream users. Awareness of mobile adblocking is very low despite being a hot topic in the media industry. While many early adopters were willing to buy a blocker initially, the market hasn’t yet responded to a trustworthy and ethically minded free offering, because until recently, you could argue, a user-friendly, free, privacy-focused Content Blocker didn’t exist.
• Installation requires a visit to Settings sub-menus so there is an opt-in beyond a single app install tap. Research consistently shows that the vast majority of mainstream users do not customize default settings. This helps explain why the online advertising industry fights opt-in models tooth-and-nail.
• Most significantly, the effect of Content Blocking isn’t felt inside Facebook and Twitter’s in-app browsers. The paucity of mobile adblocking data suggests just how significantly social network platforms have swallowed up the mobile content distribution channel.

With this week’s release of Mozilla’s Content Blocker called Focus, the market now has a respectable free blocker that features excellent on-boarding (the installation tutorial and explanation of its benefits). This could help solve the first two obstacles to adoption.

Notice the emphasis on privacy protection. Available on the AppStore.

The main issue is how Facebook and Twitter don’t support blockers in their in-app browsers. There are two things you can do to solve this issue.

Ditch the Facebook native app in favor of their mobile web app. Delete their app (this will feel weirdly liberating). Visit facebook.com in Safari. Tap the share icon. Tap Add to Home Screen. You’re still on Facebook but a notch less so. Realizing this is a radical idea, there are several benefits to consider:

1. You will end up reducing your Facebook usage and moderate your addiction to it. This derives primarily through missing the constant barrage of notifications and red badges that demand our attention and deliver neurotransmitter squirts.
2. You will reduce the personal data Facebook collects and increase your privacy protection, depending on what you post and browse. The native app gobbles up whatever data it can collect beyond your content activity to build your advertising profile.
3. You will reduce your battery drain. This app is notorious for being greedy with energy cycles and background activity.
4. You will benefit from mobile blocking when you tap on links in the Facebook news feed because they will load in Safari instead of Facebook’s in-app browser. This will further protect your privacy, reduce your data plan, and battery drain. You’ll also benefit from having tabs of open pages to save for later.

Ditch Twitter’s native app in favor of Tweetbot. While this will cost $5–10, depending on if the discount is in effect, this third party Twitter app is excellent, critically acclaimed, and a viable alternative to the official app. Benefits and factors to consider include:

1. Tweetbot uses Apple’s new in-app browser called the SafariViewController which supports Content Blockers, so you’ll protect your privacy, load mobile pages faster, and save on your data plan/battery life when you install a blocker such as Mozilla Focus. I recommend Refine if you prefer a free and ethically-minded blocker that is fully customizable.
2. Tweetbot still uses ⭐️ not ❤️ for favorites. It also blocks Twitter ads (Promoted Tweets) in your timeline.*
3. You will lose your per-Tweet stats information so it’s probably worth keeping the official Twitter app on your phone for that. You’ll also need the official app to vote in Twitter polls (at least the slim minority that aren’t snarky jokes).

If you cannot part with Facebook or Twitter apps, you can modify your link-tapping behaviors to benefit from mobile blocking.

In Facebook, they really don’t want you to leave the app, so you have to trigger the option to load in Safari. Can you find it?

In Twitter’s app, try long-pressing links (hold when you tap) to trigger the ability to load links in Safari instead of the in-app browsers. Then you’ll get the benefits of the blocker (and browser tabs).

An Ethics of Blocking

My position on adblocking has evolved. Initially, I made attempts to take a neutral position but the more I research from industry and academic sources, the more I become a privacy advocate and call for substantial reform of industry practices. It’s a classic case of when you see how the sausage is being made, you become a vegetarian.

Compare the user experience and configurations of Mozilla’s Focus blocker with the Adtech industry group’s (DAA) AppChoices opt-out app, also available on the AppStore. It wouldn’t let me opt-out of MillennialMedia device identified trackers. They offer location based targeting to their clients. But 29 other companies were gathering personally identifiable data about me including my browsing behavior until I said “no, thank you.”

Adblocking punishes publishers for the negligence and potentially unethical behaviors of bad-actors. Most perversely, adblocking does not punish advertisers. However, blocking ads on publisher pages is justifiable because significant privacy issues remain unresolved and insufficiently recognized. A major publishing industry trade group (DCN) released findings from a report today that indicates how 68% of US respondents are “concerned with ads that track their behavior.” This is one of several dimensions that suggest to DCN members that adblocking adoption will increase by 9% in the US over the coming three months.

It’s especially troubling that the reporters who have interviewed me on the topic have admitted that they can’t cover the privacy issues or depict adblocking in a positive light because “Revenue” has restricted their ability to report on the topic without bias or conflict of interest. Only Walt Mossberg has the job security to broach the topic.

All things considered, with supporting data, the unmitigated privacy concerns outweigh the argument of lost revenue to publishers. This is further balanced with more nuanced understandings of how “breakage” is priced into the market, and how sanitizing ad inventory could benefit publishers. They already contend with fraud and seek to raise depressed CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

The industry should reform. It has already articulated that it understands how consumer needs and concerns have not been met. They are realizing that blocking is how consumers join the boycott, nearly 200 million strong, with a growth pattern that corresponds to adoption of ad retargeting techniques. The majority of users are spooked and at least a third will boycott.

Since our mobile devices know more about us than our desktop and laptop computers, it’s probably even more important to consider the implications of mobile browsing with blockers as a means of defending against unregulated marketing surveillance and the unknowable impact it could have on our livelihood and freedoms.

Notes

*What are the ethics of blocking Twitter’s ads by using Tweetbot? On one hand, Twitter should be applauded for honoring the Do Not Track standard (like Medium👏) and respecting our privacy unlike most of the impression-based media industry. Twitter’s investors put tremendous pressure on the company to grow its revenue. Isn’t blocking ads on Twitter going to harm the platform if more people switch to Tweetbot?

I’m assuming if you are reading about this topic on Medium, you’re also a Twitter power-user. Convince two friends who aren’t active on Twitter to get into it. Coach them on building a better followship. Teach them some of your best tricks. Retweet them and be a mentor. Twitter hasn’t added a new active monthly user in the US in three years, so what they desperately need more than anything else is some growth on their adoption curve plateau.

Note: I don’t discuss Android adblocking here because it’s pointless. Google tracks everything you do on their platforms and appends it to your profile. They expect you to learn and configure their various privacy controls.

Adblocking Articles Library

My series of Medium posts on the subject of adblocking:

👉Adblockers and the fracking of data: An inconvenient truth about digital content might have been my best piece on adblocking because it was my first. Fredéric Filloux and Hunter Walk haven’t recommended anything else I’ve written.

👉Adtech vs. Adblock: Computers ruined advertising. Can they save it? has probably been my most prescient adblock hot-take for the Mike Judge channeling level-up.

👉Adblock as a Tragedy of the Commons: When consumer attention, property rights, privacy rights, media ethics, and market misalignments collide, monopoly wins. This was the article where it all came together. It was the final chapter of the trilogy. Then I started to get in trouble.

👉Can “Acceptable Ads” Solve Adblocking? What I learned by attending the #CampDavid Roundtable Discussion with Adblock Plus on November 3, 2015 After publishing the initial trilogy, and spending a ridiculous amount of time on Twitter ‘engaging’ on #adblock, I wound up with some invitations. Working in public was starting to work out.

👉Big Data Broker ❤️ Adblock: What does the world’s largest consumer data broker think about adblocking? This installment of the serious is perhaps the most irreverent. Reconciling the research coming out of industry against what’s coming out of academia occasionally requires a comic release.