Use of Ad-blocking software for smartphones surges: Study

Washington:  Ad- blocking software use in smartphone devices has been increased in the last few years, which create a rising questions about the acceptability of online media business models, recently a study showed.
As per the survey, more than 400 million people around the global smartphone users are blocking ads on their smartphones as of March 2016, the study by the consulting firm PageFair with the analytics firm Priori Data found.
Smartphone ad-blocking software use grown by 90 percent throughout the globe in 2015, with most of the increase use in Asia, the report states. Almost a third of smartphone users are blocking ads in China, while more than 60 percent in India and Indonesia.
Nowadays, most of the smartphone users engaged with ad-blocking browsers and applications that block marketing messages, which can be troublesome for them. Ads can also decrease connections for smartphone users and count for data allowances, which can become expensive in some parts of the world.
If ad-blocking becomes worldwide, it could change the Internet’s economic model, mainly for media organizations fighting to make transitions from print to digital.
“This report tells a sobering story about the future viability of ad-funded media and journalism in developing economies,” PageFair chief executive Sean Blanchfield stated.
“Ad-blocking now threatens all mobile channels,” he further added. “Failure to address user concerns about mobile advertising in North America and Europe will lead to the same kind of widespread ad-block usage that we are seeing in the Asia Pacific region.”
As per the report, North America and Europe have seen less of an impact from mobile ad-blocking so far. The study discovered 14 million registered users of ad-blocking browsers on smartphones in Europe and North America as of March.
Users downloaded content-blocking and in-app ad-blocking apps 4.9 million times from the Apple and Android app stores in Europe and North America since September 2014, the study showed.
Browsers that block ads are more than twice in Europe than North America. Content-blocking apps are three times more popular in North America than in Europe, with nine users per thousand smartphones.