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Adblock Plus Comes To Mobile

Ad blocking is no longer limited to desktop browsers, with this week’s announcement that Adblock Plus is launching its own mobile browser with ad-blocking capabilities built in.


Adblock had to create its own browser because mobile browsers don’t allow extensions like its desktop add-on. Currently in beta, the open source Adblock Browser is also limited to Android devices, although an iOS version is in the works. Of course the ad-blocking browser only works on the mobile Web, so ads delivered in apps will remain unaffected.

The number and type of ads blocked by the Adblock Browser depends in part on user preferences, which can be set through the “Acceptable Ads” tab. However under the default settings the browser will automatically block pop-up and pre-roll video ads, generally deemed among the more intrusive (read: annoying) ad formats out there. Under the default settings other, less intrusive types of ads -- including those that don’t block content on the page, with static images instead of animation, and without sound -- will still appear.

Adblock estimates mobile ad blocking can save 23% of mobile power consumption on average.

A separate study from Adobe found that over 144 million people around the world regularly use ad-blocking software of some kind.

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