Collateral Damage

The way I see it, ads are trying to do two things: 1. Monetise content 2. Drive sales/brand growth

Advertisers have tried to make up for ineffectiveness by increasing quantity rather than quality. If the focus was quality, everyone would win.

There's probably more to it, but more and more obnoxious advertising is a poor user experience; I don't think the audience will tolerate it for much longer.

I don't understand. If I get linked to a website that requires me to download their iOS app, I'll just close the tab. It's an annoyance, granted, but it's not some new unfathomable horror.

I also think that blocking ads is everyones right just as it's your right to record stuff on TV and filter/fast-forward ads. If business models based on advertisement don't work out anymore because of blockers (which i highly doubt), companies will adapt and start monetising their content in another way.

Apples search integration is a different story, though.

NoScript does stop many ads but that is a side affect from my point of view.

If you enter their site on iPad or iPhone, they display the chords but pop up an ad for their native app (which is limited as a free version) that is nearly impossible to click away and often automatically redirects to the App Store. It is infuriating to see the results I want underneath an ad but not be able to reach it.

I fear ad blocking will cause this effect to be all the more stronger rather than weaker: sites will entirely move away from displaying content to users on iOS and will force users to download their app.

The thing is that most users will become angry with the individual sites, but very few will put any blame on Apple themselves...so it really is a pretty brilliant evil plan on Apple's part.

And think about: On the iOS, Apple has the control of annoying/fake/phishing ads. On the web does not have. Even if ads will be shown on native apps, the experience will be more pleasant for users and will reduce abuses.

I don't really see the difference from using an ad blocker in the form of a plugin, and blocking ads by turning on the feature in the browser itself. Ad blocking is also a feaure built into the latest Firefox release.

Up until now, building a web app seemed a viable alternative to being caught up in a mobile platform you don't own. If you're ad-financed, that way is blocked now.

The Internet used to be a means around those market access controls that were exercised by the powers that be. It's not really a surprise that someone finally found a way to grab this control for themselves, at least for one revenue model.

   This could backfire on Apple. Instead of asking people to install app websites can just show that this website is not supported in Safari on Ios and they should install chrome or Opera to view it. Just like they stop you from viewing a page if you have an adblocker installed.

Anyway, the premise that it's all "positive collateral damage" is reaching. I agree some ad companies abuse it, but in general advertising has gotten better, not worse, in my opinion. Most people -- non-tech folks -- simply don't care.

The consequence of universal ad blocking could be that it becomes harder to access quality content for free. I don't know what that consequence will be, but it sure seems like a lot of content will just be paywalled or bungled into native apps, which users will be forced into downloading to view what they wanted in the first place.

I doubt we'll actually get to a point where the majority of the general population utilizes ad blockers, however, and I'm skeptical about what this change is actually for.

"The open web? Collateral damage." Also dumb.

Here's the thing. Actually using the web is getting more and more difficult from the phone. I have simply lost count of the number of content sites I visit that completely destroy the ability to actually read the content by placing ads.

There are ads popping in once the page loads. I can see the content, then its covered by some thing. Or there's a badly placed share bar or buttons covering something. God forbid you visit a local/regional news site. If you don't get hit with a "Click on the bottom to add us to your home page" button you're luckier than a Russian playing roulette.

Like many other readers, I also spend a lot of time on reddit. I've noticed in the last few weeks that Imgur is now hosting the extremely annoying ads that bounce you out of Safari and to some promoted app in the App Store. Imgur is the primary source of image hosting for reddit and they're beginning to do some shitty, spammy tactics. In many subreddits, and yes I'll cop to some of them being porn related, its a literal crapshoot to tap on a link and not have it do the same thing.

Apple's only responsibility is to its customers. This invasive ad stuff has gotten so bad that its negatively affecting the ability of Apple's customers to use their products in a good, user-friendly way. Its not Apple's responsibility to guarantee some marginally successful monetization tactic (advertising) that way too many companies try to use, poorly. Apple needs to make their platform good for the people that paid them money for their products, and those are the steps they're taking in this case.

Another point, Google has a dominant share of the mobile market with Android. Why isn't Android the dominant source of mobile web traffic? Because its a bad experience compared to mobile Safari. Google needs to improve their native experience, and in turn you'll find them eventually building in similar ad-control mechanisms with their browsers. You have to go to where your customers are leading. Period.

Last thing is about the "open web collateral damage" thing. Advertising in itself is fine. There's a huge need for people making and selling products and services to let people hear about them.

Again, its not the responsibility of browser makers to let 3rd parties do abusive things to their users, however. Advertising has gotten out of hand. This utter drive for cpm has been driven to the extreme and its at the point that companies have forgotten that their users and visitors are people, not aggregated dots in a plot chart in Google Analytics. Spam/scam advertising is not a viable industry long term, in the same way that patent trolls and record labels suing their customers hasn't been.

It used to be Google that was different from the other search engines by putting its advertisings next to its search results instead of the search results being the advertising.