for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, May 6-8 in Palm Springs.
If you thought the furor around ad blocking had died down, think again.
Mozilla is releasing today its version of an ad blocker for iOS 9. Called Focus, Mozilla is describing the free app as a “content blocker” since it offers the ability to block several types of trackers, like social buttons, analytics and ads, mirroring the same blocking features that’s offered on Firefox’s desktop browsers.
Unlike ad-blocking competitors Crystal and Peace, Mozilla is leaving alone ads that don’t track users’ behavior, a piece of good news to publishers and brands who rely on making money off mobile advertising. That’s the good news. The bad news is a good chunk of mobile ads do some form of tracking.
Focus blocks ads that are identified by Disconnect.me, a third-party company that maintains a list of ad networks that are infected with malware and malicious trackers.
For now, Focus only works on Safari and, bizarrely, not on Firefox’s iOS browser because of Apple’s stringent API rules. “This was not our choice—Apple has chosen to make content blocking unavailable to third-party browsers on iOS,” Mozilla said.
Focus will be available on Apple’s App Store later today.
Photos via Mozilla.
More in Media
Media Briefing: Another AI threat emerges for publishers: the third-party scraper
A growing network of third-party web scrapers is fueling an AI content licensing market, where publisher content is scraped and sold.
The Washington Post’s Arc XP adds TollBit to help publishers make money from AI bot traffic
The Washington Post’s Arc XP adds TollBit to help smaller publishers monetize AI bot traffic, offering a path into AI licensing revenue.
Digiday+ Research: Publishers apply AI to streamline tasks and improve audience experience
Publishers increasingly embed AI tools into daily functions, especially streamlining tasks and improving the audience experience.