Skift Take
The potential increased popularity of ad-blocking software doesn't spell doomsday for travel media sites. Quality sites will still be in demand and the publishing world will adapt. That is what change is all about.
With Apple's release of iOS 9, which supports ad-blocking apps such as Purify and Crystal, travel media sites (and others) dependent on display and video ads for revenue could face new challenges.
In June 2015, some 16 percent of Firefox users on Android had already taken advantage of the ability to tweak their browser settings to configure ad blockers, according to PageFair, a Dublin-based company that offers solutions for publishers.
In its study of the issue, The Cost of Ad Blocking (embedded below), PageFair notes that Apple's mobile Safari browser represents 52 percent of mobile browsing and 14 percent of total browsing, and forecasts that "ad blocking on mobile Safari to trend towards the level seen in the mobile version of Firefox."
In other words, perhaps up to one in five iOS 9 users could eventually opt for ad blockers.
In Asia, says Johnny Ryan, head of ecosystem for PageFair, a large portion of the population can't afford to pay for mobile data, with usage soaring because of advertisements, so there may be a greater readiness there to welcome ad blocking.
Even in affluent countries, rising data usage and slow page-load times are a sore point.
Two popular browsers in Asia, UC browser (owned by Alibaba) and Maxthon turned on ad blocking by default and they have 264 million and 120 million installations, respectively.
PageFair estimates that there are nearly 200 million installations of desktop ad blocking extensions, as well.
